I did some part time teaching here.
Because I think I've always been fond
of helping and nurturing young talent.
If there's anything I've done throughout my career
as a television producer, executive producer and actually television management
was to keep an eye out for talent and to nurture and encourage it,
you know and I thought you'll be doing same thing here basically
and that's why I thought it would be interesting to teach here.
Because we think we give them two things.
We give them a skill-set, we give them a mind-set.
A skill set is how to do things.
And that's fact, you know, that will last only for a number of years
because technology moves on very quickly.
Cameras change, software change
and you have to update your skill in dealing with those things.
What doesn't change is the mind-set that we give you,
which is really a critical faculty - independent learning.
So that you'll be able to learn new skills,
so being an independent learner,
being able to think critically.
When I was about to graduate
I already had a job as an administrative trainee
with the National Health Service.
And through a lecturer here
I ended up on the Brass Tacks Programme,
which was a current affairs programme
that was transmitted from Manchester.
And on that programme was also the editor of Telegraph and Argus.
I don't know what possessed me
but during a lull in the recording
I walked up and asked him for a job
and he said: "Well, come and see me Monday"
What was thirty quid a week
when the National Health Service would have paid me sixty quid a week.
I took the job because asked a friend, the father of a friend,
asked a father of a friend: “What should I do?”
and he said "I know which one you'd find more interesting?"
So I ended up at the T&A.
I did some early morning shifts at the BBC,
and then I did some early morning shifts,
well not early morning,
but some shifts at Yorkshire Television
and eventually they must have thought I was worth hiring
because they offered me a job.
Producing Calendar was
extremely hard but extremely enjoyable.
You had to distil the day
and you had to choose what the important points of the day were.
I was always opinion that
you shouldn't see what other people are doing,
you should make your own judgement
and then treat the story in a such a way that gave it substance.
I went through the Bradford Fire,
the Hillsborough Disaster,
the Miners' Strike.
I think they are three of the most important events
and certainly I remember the day that
that Michael Heseltine announced
40 pits were to be closed.
All in one, announced in one day
The University’s overall vision
is to be a technological university of the North
and in many cases it has always been a technological university
but perhaps it hasn't sold those elements hard enough.
How does School of Media, Design and Technology fits in
is that most of the things that we do is driven by technology.
And therefore in how we use technology
or certainly in how
content
and content creation
and digital technology meets
and the opportunity that it provides
is the area that we explore in our research,
like the Centre of Visual Computing
is the area that we explore in visual effects, games and animation.