We hosted our final Faculty of Arts and Humanities ‘In Conversation With…’on Friday, with a panel from the School of Media and Performing Arts answering your questions and speaking with students.

The panel consisted of:

• Dr Kollette Super - Associate Dean - Student Experience
• Dr Stephen Dawkins – Associate Head of Student Experience

The event was chaired by Lucy Goodacre and Emily Long from CUSU, who were joined by Justice Unanka Eke, the Welfare and Inclusion Rep for MPA. We picked out three of the key questions from the event below…

Can students who are not one of the school's students, book to use the resources and facilities owned by MPA? And if so, how can we do this?

It depends on what resource and what time student want to book them. What we have in Ellen Terry Building are normal teaching spaces and workshopping-type teaching and learning spaces. But we've also got specialist spaces like recording studios, etc. It really depends on what students are asking for because the specialist spaces are timetabled for most of the week.

They also very often need students to have gone through a process of skills instruction to use them, and also they are prioritized for students doing assessed work on their courses. If a student wants access or needs access for their course work, the best way to secure this is to contact the course director.
Students can also email our deputy Head of School, Paul Smith, and he will be able to talk them through the equipment so that clubs and societies can book spaces. We have CUSU talking to us on a regular basis about the spaces that they can.

Are any courses going on trips this semester and do you have to be on that course to attend them?

Yes, they are! There are trips going on right now. We've got a trip going out with Annabelle today, actually. They've gone to London to the BFI in London. These are trips that are specifically related to the content of the course. A lot of them are being funded by the Flying Start package. This trip to the BFI is for Media Production students to go on.

Currently we're only running UK trips up, but it is expected that we're going to get permission for international trips soon. We don't know when. We’re looking to plan some schoolwide trips that will happen towards the end of this semester and possibly after the end of the semester. But again, all of that is dependent upon government advice and the university giving permission for trips to happen. It's normally the case that somebody would have to be on the course to go on the trip because they're very specifically related to the content of modules.

Are there Scholarships, bursaries and/or support for student looking to do masters courses?

Yes, there are. If you go straight into a postgraduate degree from an undergraduate program there will be a discount. I'm going to hedge my bets on saying exactly how much that discount is because that is under discussion at the moment. But there’s a fairly long standing discount that's been applied to students.

There are different types of scholarships that students can apply for. The one thing that that we will sort of maintain is that students can only apply for one scholarship. You would need some guidance; I would point you in the direction of your student success coach here to get some help from them and find out what might be the best route for you to follow that suits your particular circumstances.
I think if it's a more general request from students more generally then they would also need to follow up with student success coaches and the talent team to find which would be the right route for them.

We have a number of further ‘In Conversation With…’ events over the next few weeks. There is a full schedule available here. A full transcript and video will be made available shortly.