The Rock Bus Blog is done...

For anyone who's interested in seeing yet another blog based project that I've been working on. Take a look at www.rockbusblog.com

The aim of the blog is to highlight what's what for the Rock FM bus and to also showcase the work that we do in the schools and communities.

My involvement with the project has steadily increased over the last few months. I now work pretty much full time on media training and teaching across North West schools and communities.

If you'd like more info on the bus then drop me an email and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Paul

Photojournalism and Wigan Athletic

I have recently been working and devising a photojournalism course for use within secondary schools and as the project draws to a close, I thought I'd blog about it a bit for any teachers who want to explore ways of looking at photography/art/media and communication outside of the classroom.

Pictured above is Tony Smith from Wigan Athletic who manages the community bus which allows the club to deliver ICT and media training in schools. Some of you may know that since the start of this academic year, I have been working as part of this team and I decided that this would be the ideal platform to build further on my ideas of how to use photography to engage people in community related issues.

For this project, we took a group of five students to the training ground where they had chance to have a go at sports photography as Wigan Athletic were training. The coaching staff and team were excellent and the Manager kindly allowed me to take an 'official photo' which will now be signed and presented to the school.

After the photoshoot, Tony showed the students round the JJB stadium and then held a mini press conference in the press room, all the time, reinforcing how the media work with the club on matchdays to get all the important info into the public domain as quickly as possible.

The project has proved to be incredibly successful and for me, it goes to show that within education, media can be used as a useful tool to engage pupils with curriculum topics and in this case, take a more detailed look at the world around them.

Working with Wigan Athletic

Some of my freelance work involves teaming up with Wigan Athletic FC where I work as a Schools Co-ordinator.

The club has a big blue 'We Are Wigan' bus that's kitted out with state of the art media production gear and laptops. The bus then rolls up to the venue and we deliver media-based schools work which usually involves the students creating a radio programme.

Needless to say, the bus is very popular indeed in the community and within the schools. especially if we have a few players onboard or other special 'guests' for our visitors to interview.

This last month, the bus has been visiting a special needs school in Wigan and we've all been working hard to make a documentary style video/radio programme to tell people what kind of things go on in school and how people's individual needs are identified and catered for. The pupils have all worked very hard on this project and although I am still putting the finishing touches to the video, it looks great!

We've had some help along the way from a few of the Latics players, Neil Turner MP and other people of equal importance, and for me, its been a real privilege to have worked in a school with such a positive and forward-thinking ethos.

Pictured in this post is Peter who visited the bus to receive a signed team poster.