My name is Luke Footman, I am 19 years old, I studied English Literature, Media studies, Drama and Theatre Studies, with an Extended Qualification at South Essex College from 2013 until 2015 and this is my story.
I am from East London and I decided to study at South Essex College because I wanted a fresh start in a new place. The college was nice and I knew a lot of people that were going there already.
A year ago, while at college, I volunteered for a theatre school where I ran the marketing and advertising team on their professional performances. I worked on and with radio stations, press releases, poster design, set design, costume and marketing. I learnt the value of working as a member of the team in a stressful environment and I gained an understanding of the process of the media in a theatre production.
I joined the Jack Petchey Foundation where I volunteered for several huge events such as The Evening Standard press party and The Glee Club at the O2 arena. I have also written several blogs for the foundation.
I have now joined a charity called ‘vInspired Team V’, which is an innovative group of young volunteers who run several campaigns on social and political matters. I have run three successful campaigns on food poverty, young careers, and where do young people stand in today’s politics.
The College also let me take around four weeks off to do an internship at Attitude magazine. The College worked out a way to get my work sent to me whilst doing the internship. The experience confirmed that I wanted to be in the media industry and I am thankful that the College allowed me to do it. I met some amazing people at College that I still talk to today.
Since completing my course I have begun my BA Hons joint degree in English Language, Communications with Media. My interest began when I opened my own theatre school, The Luke Footman School of Performing Arts, where I started using skills I had gained from past volunteering experiences.
I won the very first Wanna be an Entrepreneur competition of a £5,000 business package.
While I was at College I did over 300 hours of voluntary work and in 2013 I joined Alphabet Agency where I have taken part in several professional projects, such as, filming and commercials.
I have just finished filming a TV drama series where I gained an insight into the camera work, professional behaviour, and working as an ensemble. I was also a student ambassador at South Essex College for two years and was involved in events management, open evenings, events, and programmes.
After completing the degree I would like to work abroad within different media forms such as writing or designing.
Confidence is a big part of interviews and talking to someone effortlessly. I think once you start at South Essex College you’re spoken to like an adult and you start to present yourself in a more mature manner. I have always found it strange how we act so immature in secondary school and in a matter of months we become adults.
Educating yourself is probably the most valuable commodity you can ever have. So many people around the world don’t get the opportunities that we have such has free education and you can become an independent person and you won’t have to rely on anyone but yourself. The College also help with other things, for example I was travelling every day from London and the College gave me generous bursaries to help me with travel expenses and food which allowed me to continue volunteering. If this money wasn’t available I would had to have given up these amazing experiences and I might not have opened my own school or done so many amazing things.
The equipment I used at College is pretty similar to what I have since used. All the editing and design work I did for the Luke Footman School of Performing Arts was done on programmes I used in AS media, such as Indesign, Photoshop, Flash, etc. English literature helped massively with my dyslexia, I learnt how to read books quickly and through reading my sense of words and spelling has improved.
South Essex College has amazing facilities and the teachers give you all the help you could need. Although you’re there to learn, having fun at the same time really does help.