New year, new names, new approach for Falmouth's Journalism degree course

University College Falmouth (UCF) continues to build on the success of its well-respected BA(Hons) in Journalism with the appointment of Anna Kiernan to the post of Course Leader.

Anna has extensive professional experience in journalism and publishing, and joins UCF from Kingston University, where she was Course Leader of its MA in Publishing and a research fellow on the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded oral history project, Museum Lives. She brings to Falmouth a wealth of contacts and new ideas that will add dynamism to the student experience and fuel their ambition to stand out from the crowd when they graduate.

Building on the course's reputation for producing graduates who achieve significant success in the industry and the academic and professional standing of the BA(Hons) Journalism course team, one of Anna's first initiatives is to stage a high profile lecture series during the spring term.

This lecture series will enable students, staff and members of the public to gain a wealth of insight from literary luminaries, leading filmmakers and academic experts alike, and will highlight the spectrum of opportunities that exist for the journalists of the future.

Fiona Hackney, who leads UCF's MA in 20^th Century Art & Design, will present her PhD thesis on feminine modernity and women's magazines between 1919 and 1939 on Thursday 14 January. Fiona is renowned for her work on magazines, gender and domestic practice, most recently in Transatlantic Print Culture (2008).

UCF's Professor of English and Media Arts, Jason Whittaker, will talk about the reception of the Blake/Parry hymn, Jerusalem, among the far left and far right since the 1980s on Thursday 28 January. The author and editor of ten books, Professor Whittaker's most recent publications include Blake, Modernity & Popular Culture (2007), Magazine Production (2008) and Producing for Web 2.0 (2009). He is currently working on an edition of essays on Blake's influence on 20^th Century music, film and media.

Newly appointed Writer-in-Residence, Leo Hickman, who is an environmental journalist and commentator at The Guardian, will discuss his latest work-in-progress - a narrative non-fiction exploration of the first environmental outrage in 1850s America - on Thursday 11 February. The Guardian's environment web pages have recently been declared the world's most popular green online portal. Leo, who grew up in Cornwall just a few hundred metres from what is now the Eden Project, is the course's first Writer-in-Residence. He is also the author of Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying to Live Ethically; A Good Life: The Guide to Ethical Living; The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of Our Holidays; and Will Jellyfish Rule the World?, a children's book about climate change.

Blake Morrison - Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College and a writer of fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism, libretti and adaptations for the stage - whose poignant memoir, And When Did You Last See Your Father? was published to critical acclaim - will talk about his work on Thursday 25 February.

Former Literature Editor of Oxford University Press; writer and founder of literary magazine, Archipelago; and leader of Exeter University's MA in Writing, Nature and Place, Professor Andrew McNeillie, will discuss the literary traditions of nature writing and its resistance to the peripheral nature of publications today on Thursday 4 March.

Renowned journalist, author and investigative reporter, Brian Cathcart, who is also Professor of Journalism at Kingston University and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded oral history project, Museum Lives, will test out a new theory on the death of news on Tuesday 9 March.

All these events will take place at the Tremough Campus at 5.30pm in the Peter Lanyon Building, Lecture 3 with the exception of the Blake Morrison talk, which will take place in the Daphne Du Maurier Building, Seminar B.

As well as attracting distinguished speakers, the course also offers students invaluable opportunities to participate in projects and simulated press opportunities.

One such project aims to encourage the journalists and filmmakers of tomorrow to strengthen overseas reporting and filmmaking. Funded by the Government, the project is being run by charity, One World Media, and will involve a two-day workshop including a documentary film showing and talk by producer/director, Olly Lambert, at 5.30pm in the Media Centre Cinema at the Tremough Campus on Thursday 18 March.

Hailed by The Times as ‘one of the most talented documentary filmmakers working in British television,' Olly made his first film, Four Weeks to Find a Girlfriend for the Channel 4 series, Alt:TV in 2001. Since then, he has shot, directed and produced films for flagship series like Cutting Edge, ONE Life and Bodyshock, as well as a number of critically acclaimed documentaries including The Battle Hospital: Medics at War (C4) and The Tea Boy of Gaza (BBC2), the latter of which will be screened at this event. He has won a number of prizes for his work including the 2007 award for Journalist of the Year from the Foreign Press Association.

BA(Hons) Journalism students who participate in the One World Media workshop will be offered the chance to apply for a bursary that would enable them to travel and make a film overseas.

To sharpen the students' competitive edge, Anna arranged for Bill Barclay, a former correspondent for United Press International in Moscow and Agence-France Presse in Paris, to provide them with a bespoke workshop on international news.

Students on the course are also able to take part in simulated press opportunities through Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST). FOST, based at Her Majesty's Naval Base Devonport in Plymouth, delivers training to all of the ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Fleet Auxiliary and selected ships of NATO and other, non-NATO countries.

Media training aboard these ships is supported by professional journalists and journalism students, posing as SIMPRESS - Simulated Press. This enhances the ships' performance during their final inspections and subsequent deployments, and offers students real-world insight into how the media works in a naval context.

Anna also plans to reposition the course to reflect the key themes that unite Cornwall with the national and international news agenda - the arts, culture and the environment. She has organised a magazine and creative industries interdisciplinary masterclass with itsnicethat.com, that will take place in February. This aim of this workshop will be for students to pitch for a new publication that will nurture skills in all facets of magazine production, from graphic design and photography to print technology and the editing process. Anna, together with Jon Cope, Course Leader of UCF's BA(Hons) in Public Relations, is also scheduling an environmental PR/Journalism masterclass, that will take place in March.

"BA(Hons) Journalism at UCF has enjoyed a successful track record over many years and its graduates continue to achieve significant success, but the industry is ever changing and we need to continue to change with it," explains Anna. "To that end, we are going to play to our strengths and focus on the themes that connect the industry with our sense of place. The arts, culture and the environment in Cornwall generate big stories of national interest, and access to those major news opportunities will place Falmouth graduates ahead of the pack when it comes to establishing successful journalistic careers in the 21^st Century."

UCF's BA(Hons) in Journalism has recently relocated from the University College's Woodlane Campus to the Media Centre at Tremough, where it enjoys unrivalled facilities including an industry-standard News Room.

For further information about BA(Hons) Journalism at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/journalism, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214370.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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