More than 130 students came together to listen to and network with 14 media professionals from across the Southern region in late February.
“Meet the professionals” is an annual event run by RTS Southern and hosted at Bournemouth University, with support from Isabel Forrest, Senior Lecturer In Media Production.
A panel of professionals, chaired by Gordon Cooper from the RTS, discussed how they started and built careers in TV, before meeting the students informally in groups.
RTS Southern committee member Stephanie Farmer said: “We work hard to get a wide a range of professionals. This year, we had professionals in post-production, producing, camera, programme development, music video, the charity sector, online and media agency from Ricochet, Woodcut Media, Black List, Potato, Mambo Media and many more.”
At the event, the students also heard from recent graduate Jemma Wood, who left Bournemouth University in 2020 and initially worked in archive. Now she has secured an assistant producer job on ITV reality show Love Island. Wood said: “As a Bournemouth student, I found the ‘Meet the professionals’ event to be an invaluable opportunity to start building my network before graduating.
It provided the perfect plat- form to connect with alumni already working in the industry. Now, it’s an honour to have the chance to give back and support current students in the same way.”
