By Russ Hepworth
Yesterday was 1st April 2020, we’re all still in Lockdown, and it was supposed to be April fool’s Day, but it was too busy for that! Reflecting on yesterday, it must have been rather a different first day for our incoming Vice Chancellor, Professor Karen Bryan who joins us from Greenwich University. We in YSJ Music Production welcome her to our community and look forward to working with her in the coming years.
As if this day wasn’t the most ‘unprecedented’ time for the VC to join us, the university yesterday launched its virtual Decision Day, a challenge by any measurement. Using interactive software, the home page at www.yorksj.ac.uk turned into a engaging message board including video links, content and answers to questions from the team at the university. It was a great solution and we had a link put up to our native YSJ Music Production website www.soundoutput.co.uk.
Decision Days are as vibrant as the open days, as the beautiful campus becomes even more colourful than normal and lots of exciting activities usually take place. Normally we give the students (and their families) a decent discussion about the respective courses they might be joining and then introduce them to some of our students where they can ask the questions, they’re too scared of asking us. It’s a great way for future colleagues to meet and get to know each other before coming to university for the very first time.
Usually a Decision Day for a prospective music production student is one where we all go to the Bunker Studio and get involved in a mix or some recording with the visitors. It’s usually a fun time and one that students remember long after they’ve joined us in the September. Given current times, we’re having to find other ways of hosting our decision day experience and we’ll be placing up a ‘choosing us’ style page in the coming days.
The thing I’ve missed about Decision Day is the discussion with prospective students and their families. There are always so many interesting questions about the music industry, careers and about our students we answer on the fly, depending on the interests of the audience. We’ll miss that.
So, we’re proposing that those wanting to know more about our course to email first to [email protected] or one of our university email addresses found at the bottom of the https://soundoutput.co.uk/about/ page. From there we’ll happily have a Skype conversation with you about the course and answer your questions live.
We’re also preparing a video that our Music Production first years are putting together in lockdown to introduce you to the course and welcome you, as if they were meeting you on campus. Come back to www.soundoutput.co.uk to watch that soon.
We hope that we can provide a decent Decision Day experience to those who have yet to choose their institution for next academic year. Before deciding, please contact us and talk to us. Besides it’s such an important decision to make, that we want you to be sure we’re the right course for you!
