I moved to Birmingham to start my education at BCU. I am not originally from a city, and even though I knew I wanted to move to one, living here was a big change from the town I grew up in. We were told on the course straight away, 'there is never a day without news'. And I didn't even realise this until I got used to the city.
One of the first things I noticed was how I developed my eye for what was going on around me. I see something now and think, "oh, that could be a story." I never really had that before starting my journalism course. I would look at things and think they looked interesting, but now I find myself thinking about news angles and who I could contact to further the story. This hasn't limited me to just Birmingham though. When I go home, even though my town is significantly smaller, I still find myself looking for things that I could turn into a news story. Even if I never end up writing it, I like to think I'm training myself well for my future in the industry.
There are so many more opportunities that are open to me when I'm in the city. As well as the obvious size advantage, there are so many more people I can talk to and make networks with locally that I think I wouldn't have ever had the chance to before. The diversity of the city means I can create whole stories from voices that it is unlikely I would have heard from where I am from, and that makes journalism at BCU even more exciting.
One thing that I'm getting used to as I go around the city is photographing things for my stories. Stories are massively improved by a picture, if they're on this blog or on Twitter. I never really used to do photography, but throughout the course I'm finding myself really enjoying framing and choosing the pictures I take. A lot of the stories on here do have stock photos as their pictures, but I intend to change them as I progress and develop so each story I write can be more personal to me and my talents.
Photos from a walk around Birmingham
Comments