Local MP Visits All Spring Media to Learn About Apprenticeships

11th August 2022, by Ellie Carpenter

We were very fortunate to welcome our local MP, Sarah Green, to All Spring Media and it was my job as the Public Communications apprentice to coordinate the visit and show Sarah the world of apprenticeships in the Creative Media Industries. All Spring Media is an independent training provider for apprenticeships within the Creative Industries. Apprenticeships are rapidly growing in popularity and are becoming increasingly recognised as a valuable route into a career, especially in the media industry. This is something that we at All Spring Media are continuously strengthening, which is what led me to join the team to do a Level 3 Junior Content Producer (JCP) apprenticeship. Following on from my Level 3 apprenticeship, I have moved up the apprenticeship ladder by starting my Level 4 Public Relations and Communications (PR) apprenticeship. This was my first time meeting an MP so naturally, I was quite nervous, but I managed to overcome this by communicating well with Sarah’s team, to ensure that the visit ran smoothly, and that Sarah had a positive experience with us. In preparation for Sarah’s visit, we set up our filming room to show Sarah how our cameras and lighting work – while trying to remember the skills I learned from my JCP apprentice days!

Once I had introduced Sarah to the All Spring Media team and given an overview of what we do at All Spring Media. During this week we had our ScreenSkills apprentices in for training; these apprentices are on government-funded flexi-apprenticeships. A flexi-apprenticeship is where the apprentices have multiple placements with different employers throughout the course of the programme, while under the same umbrella agency e.g. ScreenSkills. I gave Sarah a tour of our training facilities – starting with our newly refurbished Editing Suite! In the Editing Suite were our Broadcast Production Assistant apprentices. Taught by one of our trainers, they learnt all about editing through watching film clips and analysing the editing styles, before going on to edit their own films. Sarah and I both agreed that it was so interesting to watch, we could’ve been there for hours! Making our way down to our main training room, another of our trainers, who was facilitating the Media Production Coordinator apprentices working on their budgeting and scheduling presentations, spoke to Sarah explaining the training taking place and the reasons behind it. Carrying on our tour, we popped into our Assistant Accountant apprentices training group who were on a quick screen-break so explained to Sarah how their flexi-apprenticeship works, as well as what placement they will be going into. It was lovely to introduce Sarah to our ScreenSkills apprentices as she was really invested in learning the training content and how they are getting on in their programmes.

Two of our apprentices volunteered to speak with Sarah about their experience of their apprenticeships so far. One of the things Sarah was interested in was the apprentices’ backgrounds and how they discovered the apprenticeship vacancies – as she later said that we, as a general society, need to work harder to push apprenticeships so that more people are aware of them. Drawing a close to the visit, Sarah and I sat in on one group of the Production Co-ordinator apprentices’ presentations that they had been working on. Their idea was about how they would remake a popular TV programme by changing its filming style and increasing diversity. It was the perfect end to a lovely visit. Meeting an MP seemed very daunting at first, but it was a pleasure to meet Sarah as her friendly and confident personality calmed my nerves. I very much look forward to the next time we meet! If you are wanting to learn about the Public Relations and Communications apprenticeship that I am currently on, you can find more information here, on the PRCA website: https://www.prca.org.uk/careers/pr-apprenticeship