On Friday 12 February, Film and Media undergraduates Tia Jennings, Dave Makings and Simon Morecroft went “back to school” in order to support nine Tregaron secondary school pupils who were crewing the first live webcast of their School Eisteddfod.
In an exciting new project developed by the Widening Access Scheme, the young people were trained by University of Wales, Lampeter’s Outside Broadcast mobile unit staff to operate cameras, mix pictures and sound in order to bring the annual celebration of school talent to a much wider community.
Tregaron is not the only local secondary school to have taken part in this intensive programme of multi-camera training to crew webcast events – others include Lampeter, Aberaeron, and Newcastle Emlyn – and there are more lined up.
For Geraint Davies, manager of the University’s Media Centre, this was the latest achievement in a series of successful webcasts by schools and clubs in the area.
Tutor Carol Byrne Jones said,” Young people find the work exciting, as, supported by the students and the Unit’s technical staff, they are introduced to new skills. Everyone works as a team. The Live webcast means exactly that – what you see on the screen is what is happening in the hall – so it is real and very challenging. The University’s unique satellite webcast facility, coupled with a specifically devised training programme, enables us to support local organisations and communities to showcase their work world-wide. University of Wales, Lampeter is a pioneer in this field.”
The project was funded by the Reaching Higher Reaching Wider initiative.
