If you could collaborate... entrepreneurial initiative to produce new magazine for £500

Students from University College Falmouth's BA(Hons) Photography, Graphic Design, Journalism, PR and Illustration courses came together for an innovative interdisciplinary masterclass last week.

Alex Bec and Will Hudson from cult creative website, itsnicethat.com ran the workshop, which focused on pitching and developing fresh ideas for new publishing formats, content and design in a competitive media environment.

After sharing the vision behind itsnicethat and the entrepreneurial nerve that has led to its success, Will and Alex tasked students with collaborating on a proposal for a new publication in just one hour.

Small interdisciplinary groups rose to the challenge and will have until Monday 1 March 2010 to finesse their ideas.

Submissions will then be judged by Will and Alex, and the winning entry will receive a £500 prize to fund the production of their magazine.

Will and Alex have now set up a Facebook forum for the project, where dialogue between the students and itsnicethat will take place.  (To view the dialogue online, go to the its Falmouth that group on Facebook).

Student feedback about the event was unanimously positive.  In response to the question, ‘What's the most important thing you have learned in today's session?' more than 40 responses echoed one student's view: ‘That you cannot do everything yourself!  You need to work with different disciplines to generate more ideas that you may have not thought of before', as well as ‘be ambitious', ‘be dedicated' and ‘anything is possible'.

If you could collaborate... was inspired by itsnicethat's If you could... annual art exhibition in London.  This year, the theme was If you could collaborate... and featured work from leading international artists.

"I am thrilled that UCF's students have responded so positively to this event," commented Anna Kiernan, Course Leader of BA(Hons) Journalism.  "I approached Will and Alex because their work across disciplines is exciting and innovative and, crucially, commercially successful.  The fact that they are so young was particularly inspiring for our students who are tired of hearing about the death of newspapers."

Paul Inman, UCF's Director of the School of Media, added:  "This is a good example of 
an initiative that encouraged both interdisciplinary practice and entrepreneurialism."

The event was hosted by UCF's BA(Hons) in Journalism and sponsored by the University College's Learning & Teaching department.

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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