2022 Round Up
Well this is a rather delayed look at 2022, but both December and the start of this month have been incredibly busy with short courses and trying to catch up after taking 5 months off for maternity leave. But I still wanted to document what an exciting year 2022 was.
2022 has been by far my busiest yet, even though I was only working for 7 out of the 12 months! January saw our first cohort of trainees take part in their week long training as part of the ScreenSkills Production Co-ordination for Unscripted TV training programme. This was a hugely ambitious and vitally important scheme that Media Career Advice have had the amazing opportunity to run. The scheme aimed to address the skills shortages within unscripted TV production and resulted in me training 93 individuals from 7 different cities – Cardiff, Bristol, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds & Belfast. It included Production Assistants/Production Secretaries ready to step up to the PC role, production staff returning to work, those moving from scripted to unscripted TV, ‘transferers’ from industries with transferable skills and those moving from editorial to production roles.
This programme allowed me to run my first ever in-person training courses and it was so lovely to get to know everyone from each cohort during our week of training, despite COVID-19 being a constant lurking presence. (I avoided catching the virus after travelling all across the UK but ended up having it whilst giving birth!). Once each cohort completed their training week, which included learning everything about the PC role with lots of hands on training, as well as learning how to get the most out of their mentoring relations, they embarked on their placements.
I was so excited to run the PCUTV programme as it didn’t just provide a good foundation and understanding of the PC role through the training, but we also had the opportunity for the trainees to take part in placements with production companies for up to 12 months of the scheme. This allowed them to cement the knowledge they gained during the training whilst at their placements, working on a whole range of programmes from sports, archive, history, childrens tv, educational, factual and factual entertainment, blue chip natural history, religious, studio, location & foreign filming, observational documentaries, news and more. Some of these programmes included - Naked Attraction, Glow Up, Dynasties II, Challenge Anneka, Morning Live, Songs of Praise, Food Unwrapped, Channel 4 News, Drain the Oceans and many many more!
We also had amazing support from PCs, JPMs, PMs, PEs & HOPs who volunteered their time to support our trainees across the 12 month programme providing 6 x 1hr mentoring sessions. These sessions were crucial to build confidence and provide impartial support and guidance, from clarity in the job role, to employability skills.
What was really exciting about the scheme was being able to bring on board a team to help run the programme, so it wasn’t just me working from my dining room table (although I’m finally in my own office after working at my dining table for 2 years!). We had the lovely Ayrton who was our admin assistant and was a huge support in dealing with queries, finding venues, managing applications, booking hotels & purchasing everything we needed for the programme, creating social media ads and being a master at managing Google Drive. The amazing Inge was our Placement Co-ordinator who I’m sure has spoken to every production company in the UK to ensure we provided suitable placements for all of our trainees and has massively supported every single trainee through the 12 month programme. That’s no mean feat with such a huge number of trainees to place in cities all across the UK. And of course the brilliant Anna who has trained our mentors & mentees to ensure they get the most out of the mentoring process. She has matched every single trainee with a suitable mentor and has provided support to both the mentors & mentees throughout the whole process.
Our first 2 cohorts have come to an end, with the remaining cohorts continuing up until May 2023. We couldn’t be prouder of our trainees and what they have achieved during the scheme and we are so excited to watch their careers develop in unscripted TV production roles!
As well as undertaking the huge Production Co-ordination for Unscripted TV training programme, I continued with providing short courses for ScreenSkills focusing on budgeting and scheduling and managing cost managers as part of their ‘Mind Your Business’ strand which saw 382 people undertook these courses in 2022.
I only had the chance to run 1 iteration of each of my 1 & 2 days courses in 2022, but this allowed me to train 65 people in the PC and PM role, plus how to set up overseas filming and look after post production in a PM role.
I squeezed in 2 talks, including my first for university students on creating a CV and cover letter, which I’ve been aiming to do for a while. Plus taking part in the ScreenSkills Select Congress discussion on industry-wide skills shortages, where we focused on the shortage of those working in production. The congress gave educators an opportunity to hear directly from the industry about the critical skills needs, challenges and opportunities in the UK screen industries. And I also took part in the RTS virtual careers fair.
So all of those combined meant I trained a total of 447 individuals, gave talks to 110 people and managed to squeeze in 6 one to one sessions. My newsletter subscription grew to 517 individuals and my combined social media is now at 847 followers. Of course, I couldn’t have done it all without your support. So if you took part in training or a one to one session, listened to one of my talks or kept an eye on my newsletters and social media, I owe you a massive thank you!!
I also, in addition to my Train the Trainer qualification, undertook a Level 3 Award in Education and Training contextualised to the screen industries. This was run by Claire Collins Consultancy and subsidised by ScreenSkills. I undertook fortnightly zoom sessions covering subjects such as safeguarding, developing safe and supportive learning environments, providing inclusive learning and assessment and reflective practice. These sessions took place from Nov 2021 – March 2022 and included a lot of homework each week, which was definitely a challenge considering how much day to day work I had to complete! But I’m very proud I completed the training and have found it really useful in being able to provide the most effective and inclusive training courses that I can.
2022 was of course incredibly special for me, as we welcomed our beautiful daughter Lily. Thanks to those who put up with my breathlessness during my training sessions and the constant hunger in my first trimester! She made her appearance 4 weeks after I started maternity leave, which didn’t give much time to finish the preparations, but we got by. She’s now 6 months old and we’ve just started the weaning process which is very exciting and she’s such a great little character. I’m trying to stick to part-time hours, so I’m not able to schedule as many things as I did before my maternity leave, but I’m making sure I can offer a good amount of training sessions and other services, whilst watching my amazing girl grow up.
So what will 2023 bring? More 1 & 2 day training sessions. They get more and more popular every time I run them, so I’m hoping to offer each of the training courses every 3 – 4 months. I’m aware I’ve spoken about additional training courses that I’d love to run. I promise I haven’t forgotten about these and any free time I get this year will be spent developing them. I will continue running the hugely popular FREE ScreenSkills budgeting courses which take place every 3 months (March, June, Sept & Dec), and will also be running two new sessions – Budgeting 101 & Introduction to Post-Production Paperwork as part of the ‘Mind Your Business’ strand.
I’ll be providing information on a new way to book any one to one advice sessions shortly, but due to working part-time, I won’t be able to offer as many sessions as I have in the past. I’d also love (again, as I always say!) to set up some industry talks to discuss various subjects. Plus I’ve got lots of blogs I’d love to get back to writing as well. So plenty to come, and another busy and exciting year ahead!
Don’t forget you can find all of the information on my training courses by visiting - https://www.mediacareeradvice.co.uk/training-talks and taking a look at my training calendar, or each individual training course page.