Live Client Solutions: The Woodland Trust (QAA 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

Objective:

• To provide students with the opportunity to work with professional clients, providing ‘expert’ media solutions.
• To provide students with the opportunity to take responsibility for projects, and find creative solutions to problems.
• To incorporate social responsibility and ethical citizenship into the practice and attitudes of future graduates.  
• To provide students with real-life feedback that informs decision making.
• To provide students with experiences of dealing with risk, uncertainty and high pressure environments.
• To develop students team-working, communication and interpersonal skills.
• To provide students with experience of managing budgets and deadlines.
• To provide students with the opportunity to apply their academic and practical skills within a real-world context.
• To enable students to collaborate with recent Glyndwr University graduates and commission services from new start-up companies in order to enable high-quality delivery of their own projects.

Introduction:

For students of media and communications, skills in enterprise and entrepreneurship are essential to success. Many will progress to self-employment or development portfolio careers with a number of employers and clients. All will be exposed to fast-paced, high pressure environments. All will have to have exemplary communication and interpersonal skills and all with have to be adept at seeking out new opportunities, finding creative solutions to a wide variety of problems. As such, exposure to real-world projects where such skills can be developed and honed, are a crucial part of their education.

In this particular context, approximately 20 students in their second year of study on the BA in Broadcasting, Journalism and Media Communications at Glyndwr University engaged in a live client project that spanned, for some of them, across their final two years of study – and provided them with a portfolio of genuine work experience, demonstrating capabilities within a ‘freelance mode’ of expert consultancy.

The challenge:

• To work with a non-media expert client, of national / international calibre (The Woodland Trust); finding media solutions to raise awareness of the organisation’s presence on a local scale.
• To understand the client brief – and enter the commissioning process - pitching media-based solutions to the client, in order to secure a production budget for commissioned solutions to be delivered.
• To produce and deliver the commissioned content within the timescale and budget specified by the client.
• To collaborate with recent Glyndwr University graduates, commissioning paid-for services in order to deliver a high-quality product to a professional standard, and working with role-model peers to see start-up graduate companies in action.

The students were supported in this by their course lecturer, graduate start-up companies Minimal Media and Creative Catalysts - and with two main contacts for support at The Woodland Trust.

The project ran for the duration of the students’ second and third years; beginning at level 5 in The Commissioning Process: Pitching and Selling Ideas (HUM550) module, and taking commissioned ideas forward into their Media Project and Portfolio (HUM677) and Applied Broadcasting Project (HUM609) modules.

The relationship with the client continues and will continue into the academic year, at the time of writing, with the second year cohort of 2015/16 and beyond.

Activity:

Introduction

• Students were introduced to the project via a presentation from their main contact within The Woodland Trust. This was inclusive of background information to provide context for the project and a discussion of the project brief, budget and deadlines, followed by informal Q and A.
• Students were asked to look at a newly developed woodland site, close to the university campus in Wrexham – at Plas Power Woods.
• Students were asked to consider the research presented to them as part of an ‘interpretation plan’ of the woodland site, and to consider how they might promote the woodland site to potential visitors and explain some of the conservation activities such as tree thinning, for example, which may be misperceived as destructive felling.

Research and Development

• Students were given an extremely open brief to encourage free-thinking, but with key objectives and indicators in terms of the client’s needs.
• Students were steered towards key information and research about the woodland interpretation and types of conservation activity being conducted at the Plas Power site.
• Students were given close tuition and support in addressing and responding to the brief from a specialist, media producer’s perspective. (I.e. In the form of lectures, workshops and one-to-one tutorials).
• Each student produced an individual audio-visual presentation for the client and underwent peer review and formative feedback before presenting / pitching to the client.

Commissioning

• The Woodland Trust commissioned several media content and form concepts from the students - to be taken forward into production in the next academic year - entailing the creation of an online micro-site that would host media content produced by the students and enable autonomy from the national Woodland Trust site (which would later be linked, pending approval from head office).
• Ideas included the production of an interactive trail, video content to showcase the use of Plas Power woods for specific audiences as per the client brief (e.g. families with children), and an application or game that aimed at being fun to play but delivered some key conservation messages.
• Funding was provided via a Big Lottery Fund grant that had already been secured by the Woodland Trust in order to interpret, conserve and promote the Plas Power woodland site.
• At the start of the next academic year, students formed production teams around the commissioned activities and were given budgets to work within, with deadlines and timescales for delivery of content.

Production

• Students produced storyboards, production plans and schedules and communicated with the client, integrating suggestions and feedback as appropriate).
• Students, as producers, briefed collaborators (Minimal Media who provided high-quality filming and Creative Catalysts who provided the game and web-build), communicating key objectives within the creative concepts; ensuring all parameters were met and adhered to.
• Students had to be responsive to a number of moving parameters at this stage, being able to quickly respond to find solutions to problems as they arose (for example, weather permitting that a planned location was no longer feasible, availability of employers changing at short notice, delay in art-work, Equity guidelines on child working hours for filming with children, health and safety limitations, budget limitations, and changing requirements of the client.

Feedback

• Students held periodic meetings with their main contact at Woodland Trust. They relayed updates on project progress, discussed and debated project details, and negotiated client approval and expectations.

Project Completion

• The content was delivered to The Woodland Trust, some of it being adopted for the national Woodland Trust website, which surpassed client expectation and secured further projects with the organisation, for future students. Students ensured all aspects of the brief had been met, and that all associated project administration was completed.

Evaluation and Reflection

• Students produced a portfolio throughout the projects duration, to submit for academic assessment. This included as inclusive of reflection on learning points, and changes that would be implemented if the project were to be repeated – and serves as a portfolio of work that will enable the students to showcase their capabilities to future employers or clients. One graduate specifically has gone on to work as a freelance media consultant, promoting charities and their work. Others have secured work as TV/game producers and have sited this project specifically as one that they felt confident in relaying their skills and experience in this field.

Impact:

The project had a positive impact for all of those involved.

For the client, The Woodland Trust (and Big Lottery Fund), the content now exists as a microsite receiving unique visitors and offering information to woodland visitors at Plas Power Woods.

At the time of writing, the graduate start-up companies continue to go from strength to strength and have secured other work on the strength of the project and through new contacts made during the process. 

Learner outcome:

For the students, the project required them to combine a wide variety of skills, to communicate and collaborate in delivering creative concepts in an unfamiliar scenario, with a brief set and funded by a real client, inclusive of the real world responsibility and pressure associated with it. This proved challenging yet enjoyable for all, and developed the skill set in the group in a way that would not have been possible in a simulated environment.

Resources:

• An external partner able to set an appropriate brief to students (ideally supported by a budget).
• The support of appropriate internal departments at the University with project delivery (for example, with developing risk assessments).
• Links to the content produced by the students can be found in the ‘References’ section.

References:

Creative Catalysts. 2015. Online Marketing Wrexham and Chester by Creative Catalysts. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.creativecatalysts.co.uk/ . [Accessed 04 August 2015].

Minimal Media. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.minimalmedia.co.uk/. [Accessed 04 August 2015].

Plas Power Woods | Explore woods | The Woodland Trust. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/wood/4314/plas-power-woods/. [Accessed 04 August 2015].

The Woodland Trust. 2015. The Woodland Trust. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/. [Accessed 04 August 2015].

Author:

Sally Harrison

Email: s.harrison@glyndwr.ac.uk

Mike Corcoran

Email: m.a.corcoran@outlook.com (www.macorcoran.com)

With thanks to The Woodland Trust, Minimal Media and Creative Catalysts, and a team of very dedicated students.