4 Years Old
We’re already halfway through 2024 and it’s come to that time of year again where I celebrate my company’s birthday and this year it’s my 4th birthday!
Those four years have gone incredibly fast and I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved in that time. I am still so passionate about supporting individuals to improve their knowledge and skills in the industry and support them in their careers, whether that’s getting their first role in the industry or progressing up the career ladder.
So what’s happened in the past 12 months? I achieved my goal of bringing on board some additional trainers to provide some brand-new courses. It was a goal I’d had since setting up the company in 2020 as I want to support as many trainees as I can to achieve their career goals, and I want to continue to offer courses to offset the lack of training within the industry. This saw us bring on board our initial three trainers, with Anna Roberts providing our Become a better manager with coaching and mentoring skills course, Matthew Harrisson providing Understanding Kit for Unscripted Production Teams and Understanding Kit for Unscripted Editorial Teams courses and Viki Carter providing our Step up to Production Executive/Head of Production in Unscripted TV course. More trainers will be joining us later in the year.
Alongside these brand new courses I ran multiple Organising Overseas Filming, Production Co-ordination for Unscripted TV and Production Management for Unscripted TV courses. I also ran six free bitesize courses for ScreenSkills multiple times and trained almost 600 individuals just on those bitesize courses alone over the past year.
I also had the opportunity to provide longer versions of my budgeting courses to TRC for the ScreenSkills Series Producer Programme. I ran a free webinar on How to create an impactful CV for the Film & TV Industry and also supported an individual with their coursework on the ScreenSkills Level 4 Production Co-ordinator Apprenticeship. I also got the opportunity to discuss my career, what a Production Manager does, tips on CVs and interviews and training during an episode of the Getting into TV podcast with Tom Dix.
Our cohort 1 trainees on the Production Assistant Training Programme for Unscripted TV
We were able to fulfil another of my goals from last year, which was to run another production management related scheme for ScreenSkills. We launched the Production Assistant Training Programme for Unscripted TV in September 2023. We trained 41 individuals from across the UK in the PA role. This included graduates and new entrants into the industry as well as transferers from outside of the industry. They have been undertaking placements in Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, London & Manchester and have 6hrs worth of mentoring with an industry mentor. The programme is due to finish later in the year, so we’ll provide a full round up then as well as the successes of our trainees.
I got to meet the ScreenSkills team and fellow trainers in person during the ScreenSkills Training Forum which took place in May. It was a brilliant event which brought everyone together and helped to outline ScreenSkills’ priorities over the next financial year. I wanted to continue that sense of community with my fellow trainers and have set up a Facebook group for us which you can join here if you are a training provider - UK Training Providers for the Screen Industries.
We had such a busy year training a total of 902 individuals through our short courses, brand new training courses, our CV webinar and the ScreenSkills bitesize courses, running a total of 62 courses over the past year. This means we are due to hit 2,000 individuals trained by the end of June since we started 4 years ago! I’m so incredibly proud of this fact and it’s amazing to have achieved this in a relatively short space of time. I’m also pleased to have supported 18 individuals over the past year to achieve their career goals through one to one sessions as I’m passionate about helping individuals to start or progress in the industry.
A huge thanks to everyone who has supported me this year, whether it was attending a course, a webinar, a one to one session, or just liking and sharing posts. I wouldn’t be here without your support.
For this coming year I’ll be bringing on board more trainers, providing longer form training such as our Developing great formats for Unscripted TV or webinars such as our free Setting up Shoots in Saudia Arabia session. If there is a particular webinar or training you would like to see, do let us know and we can see if we can set it up. Equally, if you’re a trainer and interested in running training for us, drop us an email at – contact@mediacareeradvice.co.uk. We’ll also be rounding up the ScreenSkills Production Assistant Training Programme for Unscripted TV and continuing to run our courses, ScreenSkills bitesize courses and one to one career advice sessions. Take a look at what we’ve got coming up here.
It’s been an incredibly exciting and rewarding journey so far and I’m really looking forward to expanding the courses we can deliver and continuing to provide our training and career advice sessions. Thanks for coming on the journey with me and thank you again for all of your support!