Our new course the BA (Hons) Media and Creative Industries has launched this week and we are pretty pleased about it. It has taken a lot of thought and hard work and ideas and discussion and consultation and you name it, we left no stone unturned. The kernel of the idea began in 2014 and it takes a while for any good idea to pass all the tests: concept, time, energy, strategy, stress and approval. In fact, what we learned is that ideas get better as they pass each test, jump each hurdle and grow in response to each challenge. It's the process of getting the creative idea through the systems and into the world that makes us feel the most proud. So many people have been involved in this course development, from excellent external marketing agencies who collected the research from over 200 students and interviewed so many more. At least 12 of those students were kind enough to each make us a video of their personal perspectives on our course design, proposed modules and (in the end) those prospective students chose the title, not us. It was part of our ethos from the beginning that we would build a course not just based on what we wanted to teach but on what others wanted us to teach. So it was collaborative from inception.

Alongside all this student research we undertook 15 interviews with leading national and international professionals from the media and creative industries. This really helped shape the inclusion of key modules such as The Residency, Creative Producing or Media and Intellectual Property. It has been a real team effort and over the next year we will be planning our expansion of staff and facilities in preparation for welcoming new students at undergraduate level. This does mean a new emphasis for the Centre but not one that detracts from the excellent and immensely popular Masters courses we have always delivered. In fact, the key things that make our Masters so special, that our postgraduate students love, will be applied to our new undergraduate course, and maybe those undergraduates will want to stay with us for one more year! To find out more about our new course see the central university study page or our departmental course page.