With one final morning in Liverpool, our next destination was Manchester. The distance between Manchester and Liverpool was about 45 minutes by bus. Truthfully, we were all tired and so the bus ride felt like 5 minutes by the time we finally arrived.
Our first stop was the University of Salford in which their media school sits in the heart of MediaCityUK. MediaCityUK is a huge hub of media companies such as ITV and BBC, as well as others.
At Salford, we met Dr. Annabelle Waller who gave us a tour of the 3-level building that is known as its Arts and Media Building. Dr. Waller gave us a broad tour pointing out different landmarks before taking us inside the building to view different TV studios, as well as, a radio station.
Throughout the entire duration of the tour, Dr. Waller stressed that Salford’s location is the key component to intertwining the worlds of academia and industry. There is even a spot on the 3rd floor of the university where you can see into one of the radio stations.
Immediately after the tour, Dr. Waller led us to a high tech classroom where we heard her short presentation on immersive media, mainly virtual reality. It offered an unique perspective of what media can mean for us as we continue to study communication-related fields.
In the same room after Dr. Waller’s lecture, we had another guest speaker, not much older than us. James Probert is an assistant producer at BBC. Some of his past work includes: Blue Peter and BBC Sport. As someone who didn’t know he wanted to pursue TV, James spoke to us in a way to provide advice as we soon begin our career journey ourselves.
While it was a packed day, our last stop was the BBC MediaCityUK tour. Right away our tour guides not only made us feel welcomed, but we’re genuinely interested in getting to know us as people for the short time we were with them. It was such a cool experience to see the behind the scenes of some of the most famous TV sets in the UK (and sitting on the red couch).
Once we got settled into our hotel, it wasn’t long until we had to meet for dinner. Our dinner was at this small little pub near the hotel. These three course meals are proving to be interesting.
Onto Edinburgh, Scotland tomorrow!