In February this year I was selected to be part of the Lincoln School of Media’s Mentoring pilot, where students across Media, Audio and Film & Television were matched with a mentor within the creative and media-related industries to give us guidance about the area that we wanted to get into. Being a Media Production student with a particular interest in Television I was matched with LSM’s 2006 alumnus Katy Atkinson, Director of ‘The Reporters’ Academy’ – it works with young people, training them how to report and interview with a particular eye to sport. Katy and The Reporters’ Academy were the first youth group to be granted a press pass for the London 2012 Olympics, where the team covered the event alongside such big names as the BBC.
Katy: “I am pleased to say we have made great progress. Our main thrust is to find Rosie experience, to project her ahead of other candidates and allow her to gain a better insight into what route she might like to pursue upon graduating. Rosie realises that her career journey has already begun.” As part of the LSM mentoring, we meet regularly with our mentors. My lovely mentor Katy very kindly invited me up to MediaCityUK in Manchester for the afternoon for our second meeting this April. I have visited Manchester before but never been to the newly built MediaCity… and I was amazed.
I visit London quite a lot and it was a pleasant surprise to find the same creative atmosphere and hustle and bustle of media work in a very calm and quiet atmosphere. I was impressed. We met up for coffee to start the day and spoke about how I could tailor my CV to different work experience placements that I am looking to find/apply for this coming summer. Katy also helped me to look at how I could be more persuasive in my language when contacting media companies for placements. This was something that I found incredibly useful.
After our meeting I had a tour of MediaCityUK and was shown a fantastic building called ‘The Greenhouse’ where Katy’s office is based. Whilst I was in Manchester I took the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and familiarise myself with the location. After all it is becoming Britain’s second city and media opportunities are flying around in the north of the country as well as the south too! It was a fantastic day and thank you to Katy for showing me around!
Here’s my previous post on the blog. As always I tweet @_RosieTurner, so follow for updates!