Today we had the pleasure of sitting down with a recent media graduate who has been on a pretty big journey at BCU since he started just 3 years ago. Let’s go and meet Patrick Lay!
Hi Patrick, it’s great getting to chat with you today! We hear you’ve just graduated, congrats! Tell us about the course you studied & what a typical day was like for you?
"My degree was BA Hons Media Production. This typically involved a mixture of seminars, group meetings to plan different TV productions or work on the production itself. On other days, we would have a lecture in the main Parkside theatre, most notably for our major project in the final year."
How many of our award levels have you completed & how long did it take for you to complete these?
"I completed all four of the bronze, silver, gold and platinum awards during my three years at BCU which included external work placements in addition to my Media degree."
We see you have your own online presence & YouTube channel. Tell us more about the brand you’ve been building up & how you started?
"In 2015 I enrolled on a one week TV presenting course at TV Training Academy in London (which included me writing different pieces for my own show reel).
After realising this was something I had a natural flare for, I set my own ‘PL presents’ YouTube channel (feel free to subscribe) and began to produce my own presentations to camera about local interest sites in Birmingham and some football related interviews. I always have a keen eye for potential stories for my channel that haven’t had the publicity they deserve.
From then on this has grown and so came my decision to start my BCU Media degree in 2017."
We heard you won a Sky Scholarship, what an achievement! What was it like getting to work at Sky?
"It was a real honour to be selected as one of the four BCU students for this flagship placement and was the icing on the cake to win the ‘Best performer’ award.
Like every new job, there is that feeling of excitement when you arrive on ‘day one’, but magnify that feeling by quite a bit as somewhere as prestigious as Sky was such an opportunity to make an impact.
During my fortnight at their London studios, I got to work with all the teams in their ‘Content Services’ departments, so it was great to sample a lot in a short period of time and a very good insight into exactly what is required to deliver top quality TV."
We know you had your own radio show with Scratch Radio & also did presenting for Scratch TV, tell us more about what you got up to during this time?
"Scratch TV was something I had earmarked since the BCU open day as becoming a TV presenter is my ultimate goal, so I successfully auditioned for the reporter role.
I wrote my own interview with then BCUSU president Jaspreet Singh, hosted the 2018 BCUSU elections question time and results night and co-presented one of the episodes of ‘Scratch Chat’.
Scratch Radio was more of an experiment to start with as I had never presented on air prior to Uni. But I put my idea forward to the society of producing/presenting ‘the 80s hour’ as I have a great knowledge of ‘forgotten gems’ from that era rather than the ones you always hear.
I set my own Mixcloud account and in total recorded 30 shows during my first and second years at BCU."
You spoke to us about your work placement at Birmingham TV. What experiences did you have here & what did you gain from undertaking it?
"Initially I helped with the archiving of their old footage as well as going out on location as a camera and lighting assistant and approach members of the public to get ‘vox pop’ recordings of their opinions on breaking news stories on the day.
As someone who is very passionate about football, I was then given the responsibility to read the football round-ups of the weekend games for clubs in the region. This involved researching different statistics and background information and entering them onto autocue to fit my timed segment."
If you had to give advice to a new first year student about starting their Grad+ award with us, what would you say?
"Without doubt take part in it. Even as a mature student with over 25 years work experience, I feel this is a great award to add to my CV. It also helps you to keep focused when doing different work placements as part of the core Personal and Academic Development module."
Finally, as you are now officially a graduate, what are your plans for the future?
"Well I have my own aspirations, but a lot will depend on the post-lockdown economy as to how quickly they may materialise.
Patrick is a true example of the incredible and life changing experiences you can have when you begin your journey at BCU. We wish him good luck for his future endeavours. If you’d like to tell us about your journey you can email us at graduate+@bcu.ac.uk to chat with us further!"