Enhance your student experience: SUBU’s latest update

subu_logo_smallNerve Radio recently brought home an impressive four awards from the National Student Radio Awards, sponsored by BBC Radio.

Find out from Chloe Schendel-Wilson what else has been happening in the world of SUBU, including:

  • Sharing responses to your feedback
  • Training SUBU’s new part-time officers
  • Raising And Giving (RAG) expeditions
  • This year’s LEGGIT success
  • New academic clubs and societies
  • What happened most to students in 2013-14

Read the SUBU President’s full report to find out more.

Emeritus Professor Sean Street shares poetry with ABC Australia

BU’s Emeritus Professor of Radio Sean Street shared some of his favourite poetry pieces about sound and radio for ABC Australia programme Poetica.

Sean read some of the poetry from a collection he published called Radio Waves: Poems Celebrating the Wireless, and spoke about the history of radio and poetry.

“Before there was print, there was poetry,” he said. “Poetry was a spoken form before it was a print form.

“So I think radio has the potential to reclaim the aurality for poetry and give it back to the ear.”

He added that radio is an ideal media for poetry “because it’s coming at you out of darkness, it’s coming at you where you’re concentrating on pure sound.

“We move beyond words into a world where the sounds become the poem.”

The programme featured a number of readings of poems about radio from Sean’s book – including one he had written himself called Shipping Forecast, Donegal.

“I very quickly discovered, when I started researching for Radio Waves, how many British poets had written poems about the shipping forecast,” said Sean.

“It’s perhaps because, weather forecasts in particular or marine forecasts in particular which cite specific places and gives you a series of numbers, is what I call the cold poetry of information.”

Listen to the full Poetica programme

Media School US Election coverage wins award

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Bournemouth University Media School students’ radio coverage of the US 2012 Presidential election has won a Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) award for best radio news day.

Media School students won the award for working through the night, broadcasting live on Hope FM and online, giving the latest news and results from the US 2012 Presidential election.

The radio coverage included hourly bulletins and news flashes throughout the night, along with live debates and guest speakers including Conor Burns MP.

The radio broadcast was only one strand of the US 2012 coverage as students were also tasked with producing a live television broadcast and a stream of online news coverage about the election.

Multimedia journalism students Beth Graham and Jodie Packwood both worked on the radio coverage as Editors and were in Coventry to receive the BJTC award. They said, “It feels really good as we put a lot of effort and time into this project. It’s the first time the radio side of the project has been recognised with a prize so it’s nice to know our coverage was award winning.

“We learnt that radio journalism takes a lot of pre-planning – you can’t just go on air and have a chat. We planned this right from the beginning of term. A highlight was when we called the result of Barack Obama winning, before the BBC.”

The students were also quick to thank the lecturers who made the radio broadcast possible, adding, “We would also like to thank the lecturers who helped out on the night and in the run up to the event – particularly Cat Greeves who helped us so much. And the project wouldn’t have even been possible without Mat Charles and Ann Luce who were the ‘big bosses’ of the event and put it all together.”

BU’s BIRSt station scoops two wins at Student Radio Awards

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An online radio station run by Master’s radio students at Bournemouth University picked up two prestigious prizes at the Student Radio Awards (SRAs).

BIRSt is run by MA Radio Production students, with an innovative mix of music, drama, and features.

It won a Silver Award in the Best Station category, while Richard Spalding received Silver in the Kevin Greening Award, which recognises creativity and innovation, for his BIRSt feature Teabagging.

The BIRSt team at the station launch with BBC Radio 4 presenter Jane Garvey

The BIRSt team at the station launch with BBC Radio 4 presenter Jane Garvey

The Student Radio Awards are run by the Student Radio Association, and took place in London on November 7.

They celebrate the best of student radio nationwide, as well as launching the next generation of radio talent into the industry – with previous winners including Radio 1 DJs Greg James and Scott Mills.

Jo Tyler, Radio Production lecturer at BU, said: “It is an amazing achievement for BIRSt to win these awards at this level.

“Set up as an internet station since 2000, BIRSt has challenged students to consider different ways of broadcasting from the outset and is very much where the radio industry is heading now.”

She added: “The BIRSt 2013 team rose the challenge of producing interesting, creative and engaging content for an under-served younger audience globally and I pleased to say that many of the cohort have already secured jobs with the BBC and other broadcasters for their work.”

Bournemouth University students Charlotte Gay and Aoife Allen were also shortlisted for this year’s SRAs in the Best Female Presenter and Best Newcomer categories respectively.

 

BU archaeologists and the mystery of the Roman statue

Archaeologists from BU gained international news coverage after a breakthrough in identifying a Roman statue that had remained a mystery since it was discovered in the 1800s.

Dr Miles Russell and Harry Manley, from the School of Applied Sciences, used the latest in 3D scanning technology to reveal that the mystery stone head – which was discovered in a flowerbed in Bosham, Chicester, in around 1800 – is from a statue of the Roman Emperor Trajan.

The story was featured on the Daily Mail website, the BBC news website, and the Huffington Post, as well as in the Portsmouth News and on various BBC local radio stations, BBC Five Live and regional radio station Wave 105.

It was also covered by specialist new organisations, including Archaeology magazine and Heritage Daily.

Miles, a senior lecturer in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at BU, said: “The key thing is that this is certainly the largest Roman statue found so far in Britain and it’s a major piece of archaeology which has been ignored and overlooked for so long.”

The statue, which is made of Italian marble, would have been erected by Emperor Trajan’s successor Hadrian when he visited Britain in around AD 122.

Miles has been researching the head as part of his work on monumental sculpture and will give a talk on his findings at The Novium museum in Chichester.

His lecture – Finding Nero (and other Roman Emperors) – is on Thursday 24 October from 6.30-8pm. To book tickets or for further information contact The Novium, Tower Street, Chichester on email at thenovium@chichester.gov.uk or call 01243 775888.