Progression routes By Izaak Cooper

Progression opportunities within the Creative media Sector HE courses – HE stands for higher education, this means degree’s at university. work experience – this is unpaid experience with a professional to gain industry skills training opportunities – this could be either training on a job or specific full cost training courses.

University UCAS is the The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and is based as a UK organisation with the main role being to operate the application process for British universities. Students use tis to apply to university You get UCAS points to go to university by completing a level 3 course like a diploma or A levels. It depends on your grade how many UCAS points you get. On my current course pass gets you 72 UCAS points and distinction gets you 168 UCAS points.

Degree courses This course based in cambridge requires 112 UCAS points and the course consists of  photographic practice including digital / analogue image-making, experimental crossovers, multimedia, self- publishing and exhibition.

This photography degree requires 120 UCAS points and the modules covered encourage experimentation and risk-taking and allows you to engage with photography in a variety of contexts, responding to the expansive nature of contemporary photographic practice. 

Pros and Cons of HE (Higher Education) courses The positives of going to University is the better chance of getting a job after coming out of uni as you have the higher level of qualification The negatives of continuing your career via the university path is that you don’t get the chance to actually work ‘on the job’ gaining valuable skills, rather than sitting in lectures. You also have a very big debt when you come out uni, about £27,000.

Work experience the opportunities in my local area to gain work experience could be local freelance photographers who might let me shadow them at work or small graphic studios.

Pros and Cons of Work experience The positives of work experience is that you get hands on work knowing what a company expects from you and what you need to do in order to achieve the task at hand. Also to build up a portfolio for yourself to go towards a job. The negatives of work experience is that some times you wont be made to do work that Is involved with the job and qualification you are going for. You can probably get a job in the media industry with only media work experience but it will be at a very basic lever just being a runner. An apprenticeship does constitute as work experience.

Training Training can come from a job you may already work at or a company who is hiring can put you through a training course before you go to work and you can even get paid training where you pay a company to train you in a specific field. Purple Media Solutions does media related training

Pros and Cons of Training Positives of continuing my career via training is that you directly get hands on work from a company that do the work for a living and have a reputation in the field your being trained for. Negatives of continuing my career via training is that the work you are being trained for is very specific and may not be helpful if you get a media job in a different field. You can get a job through just training but again you will have to start from the very bottom.

Conclusion All of these routes are a good way to get into the creative media industry. I think that the university route is much safer in getting a job but there are a lot of financial draw backs to uni which the other routes do not have. I think that work experience is still safe and there isn’t any financial issues with it but it may be harder to find a job than uni. And finally the training is definetly my least favourite choice as it is very hard to get a job with and it sometimes has financial involvement. i think that work experience is the best route for me as I like that its reasonably safe in terms of getting a job and doesn’t cost anything to get work experience.