Author: Robin Cecala

Our first meeting today was with one of the people that works to organize the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Oliver Davies.  The Festival is so involved.  There are hundreds of venues featuring a range of groups and performers.  Audiences can find performance art, ballet, musicians, comedians and pretty much anything that you can imagine. The logistics […]

After a bit of a nutty experience at the Manchester airport, we made it safely to Edinburgh, Scotland. We have the cutest hotel (The Grassmarket Hotel) right in the center of everything. I have a very small room but it’s full of character and it has something I have never experienced before… A bed shaped […]

Short post today because I have been feeling very under the weather. We left Liverpool and headed towards Manchester/Salford today.  We met first with Dr. Annabel Waller.  She took us on a tour of the facilities on the Salford campus located in BBC Media City. It is impressive the number of TV and radio studios […]

We had a little free time this morning. Jan and I walked by the water’s edge near the hotel. There was a chain barrier featuring thousands of locks. It ran all along the area. Jan and I had a quick look at the Museum of Liverpool. There was a special exhibit on about the music, […]

We spent today in Stratford Upon Avon.  We had a walking tour about Shakespeare to start the day.  We saw the Royal Shakespeare Company theater, the church where he was interred and baptized, his grammar school and the home where he was born. The walk was beautiful and it was a nice quaint little town […]

We left London this morning and headed out to Windsor Castle. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide that took us around the town before we headed onto the castle grounds. The grounds themselves were gorgeous and it was a really nice day for walking around.    No pictures we’re allowed inside the castle or […]

Today’s media visit was a four hour long experience with Hearst UK.  It is amazing how generous they were with their time. We were welcomed with snacks and then toured their new facilities in small groups. One of the spots I found most fascinating was their library/archive section. There were editions of magazines bound there […]

Two media visits today.  The first was Battenhall.  The agency has had all kinds of success.  They don’t even seek out business, it comes to them.  Drew explained how he started his 50+ employee business with just him and it has grown to its current size.  The staff rotated and presented on different topics including […]

Had a good (filling) breakfast at the hotel and then we were off to our first media visit.  A lecture on the landscape of media in the UK presented by Jason MacKenzie. He was really good! He kept the students (and all of us faculty) engaged as we discussed various topics pertaining to UK media. […]

We left Pittsburgh late Sunday night on a relatively new direct flight to London (Heathrow) Airport.  We arrived about 10am or so and made it through passport control/customs relatively quickly. We met our tour manager, David, and Jan at the airport.  From then we boarded a nice bus and headed into central London. We made […]