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Bolton man and BBC Commissioning Editor, Aaqil Ahmed, paid tribute to the inventiveness and professionalism of University of Bolton students as he opened the Creative Degree Show.

He told industry guests at the opening ceremony last night (Thursday 17 June 2010) how he had been impressed with the students working with his teams at the BBC. Hundreds of students are exhibiting until June 23 at the University’s Deane Road campus, across all creative disciplines – from Animation and Illustration to Media, Writing and Production.

  Mr Ahmed, who trained in graphic design and photography, is now Head of Religion and Ethics for the BBC. He told guests the students had achieved ‘no mean feat’ in developing creative ideas for bringing religious programming to Radio 1 and pitching those ideas to Head of Religion Radio, Christine Morgan.

The University of Bolton and the BBC have been working together to open up pathways into employment in the media industry for students and to develop new talent within the region.

The University signed a partnership agreement with the BBC in 2008, ahead of the Corporation’s move to Salford next year.

The partnership between The University of Bolton and the BBC helps to identify new talent, focus on learning and development, build relationships within communities and develop clear pathways into the BBC and the wider industry.

The BBC works with the University of Bolton on projects which now include:

BBC Radio Drama Media Placements for Bolton students

planned writing workshops for students with BBC producers and writers who  come to the University as guest speakers

BBC Writersroom networking events

supporting the BBC’s religion and ethics section with the University helping the BBC reach a broader cross-section of the community.

The BBC and the University of Bolton are also working together to develop student placement opportunities within sound recording and music production.

And together the two institutions are developing an outreach programme for local colleges which aims to highlight the range of media careers to young people who do not traditionally consider the media as a profession, such as those from ethnic minority groups.

University of Bolton students won the BBC Writersroom Future Talent award for new writers 2009 and been placed runner up in the contest this year.

Said Creative Industries Liaison at the University, Jane Stuart: ‘It is great for Bolton to have someone like Aaqil with the BBC, and such a champion of bringing opportunities to the North of England with the BBC’s move from London to Salford.’

The new centre at MediaCityUK in Salford will be home to around 2,400 BBC staff from 2011. Five key London-based departments, including two TV channels and two radio stations, will be making their new homes in Salford: BBC Children’s (including CBBC and CBeebies); BBC Formal Learning; BBC Future Media and Technology; BBC Radio Five Live (including Five Live Sports Extra) and BBC Sport

Written by one of the UK’s best known poets and the University of Bolton’s visiting professor, Ian McMillan, and accompanied by images made by Ian Beesley, Course Leader for MA Photography, this world premiere of a new song-cycle for brass band, choir and soloists looks back at the moment in 1985 when the miners of south Yorkshire returned to work after a full year on strike.

McMillan’s words portray the changing landscape and the families struggling to stay together.

Ian Beesley, Programme Leader for MA Photography, has recently given a guest lecture at The Narrator’s Gaze Photography Symposium, organised by The National Coal Mining Museum for England and supported by the University of Bolton and Gallery Oldham.

The conference was a special event that celebrated 50 years of documentary photography and was held in association with Nothern Soul, a new exhibition featuring the work of renowned photographer and film maker John Bulmer.

A second photography symposium will be taking place at Gallery Oldham on the 15th May 2010 and will be linked to their forthcoming North South Divide exhibition.

Centre, Ian Beesley.

Nicholas Hellewell, programme leader for the BA Photography course here at the university, celebrated along with the British film industry, forty years since the making of the iconic British film, “The Railway Children”.

In a television interview carried out on the footplate of a locomotive belonging to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, in West Yorkshire, on Sunday 28th March, and to be broadcast on BBC’s Breakfast television on Thursday 1st April, he made reference to the significance of the film to today’s society in being a champion of family values and good overcoming bad.

Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett and Bernard Cribbins were present at the world premiere of the re-mastered film shown on the concluding night of the 16th at Bradford film festival, and before an audience of invited guests answered questions about the film.

Nicholas who was amongst those guests, together with his daughter Frances, both work as volunteers on the preserved line where the film was made. Nicholas acting as fireman in the original film, and now as a driver, has worked on the line for 44 years. His daughter Frances is the railway’s only lady fireman. They are pictured here on a locomotive, during a normal operating weekend.

The new DVD will be on sale this spring and is well worth purchasing, as it will also feature revisits to the line forty years after the making of the film, to carry out interviews with those people involved in it’s making, the glorious early summer of 1970.