Sky Skills Studios

Some time ago I found a list of free trips for schools, one of which was to Sky Skills Studios. I asked a few friends if they thought it sounded interesting (they did) and then emailed to ask if the sessions were open to HEors as well as to schools. The response I got was very positive – not only were they happy to welcome HE groups but they’d be very grateful to have the word put out that this was the case 🙂
We ended up with a group of 28 children, mostly HE but a few ex-HE or friends/family of HE, which was just about the right number and gave us a nice balanced 7 in each group (oh! the pain of making groups! I agonised for hours to make sure everyone knew someone and each group had people who’d chosen different skills and… it all seemed to work in the end, anyway 🙂 ). We’d been told that 6 adults could go in too, but in the end all the adults who had come were invited to go on the tour and then given a token for tea or coffee and the choice of using the token or staying with the children for the studios part. HH and I decided we’d better stay, while everyone else went off to enjoy some corporate hospitality (and didn’t even bring us a cup of tea – sob!).
It was fab! The tour was interesting – and our group got to brush past Parkinson in the corridor! Sadly I was so busy counting heads and checking we had everyone that I didn’t realise until too late that it was him, but I’m told it definitely was 😉 We saw where programmes are made, including weird spongy rocks, designed to be able to be rolled up and carried from place to place for instant studio dressing, admired a £300k camera, peeked into rooms where editors were busy doing their thing and other rooms where people get to watch sport all day, checking for transmission quality. The highlight of the trip, though, was the work the children did in the studios. We’d chosen Natural Disasters as the topic, so the aim was to produce a report which the groups would write, present, film and edit in four sections. These would then be put together to make one report, a copy of which would be put onto USB drive wristbands for each child to take home and keep. The first group had the task of introducing the topic, the second did a slightly wider report, the third had on-the-spot reporting and interviews with eye-witnesses and the fourth wrapped it up with a discussion of what could be done in future. They were all fab and it was really interesting to see how the different groups worked together and the results they had according to the different approaches the tutors took with them and the dynamics of the groups. Definitely something worth doing again, perhaps in a year or so and with a different topic 🙂