Rise Up Academy Summer School for young students debuts this August

Rise, the advocacy group for gender diversity in the media technology sector, has announced the launch of its Rise Up Academy Summer School, the industry’s first free-to-attend event welcoming young students to learn about the technology behind getting great content onto our TVs, tablets or phones, as well as highlighting the possible career opportunities across new technologies such as virtual production.

The event will be taking place on 2-5 August at the Global Academy in Hayes, Middlesex. The sessions are split across two age groups; the 2-3 August is exclusively for students in years 7-9 and then, for those students in years 10-13 on the 4-5 August.

With a focus on delivering two fun packed days for 500+ students to get hands-on media technology experience, students will have the opportunity to learn a wide range of technical and support-orientated skills from industry experts including:

• Building a TV studio and creating a TV show;
• Exploring an Outside Broadcast (OB) Truck;
• Creating eye catching graphics;
• Learning more about post production and getting hands-on editing video content;
• Finding out more about what virtual production is;
• Exploring cloud technology

The Rise Up Academy Summer School has been made possible due to generosity and support from the industry, with sponsors including:

Event Sponsors: Blackmagic Design | BT Sport | Clear-Com | disguise | Global Academy | Harmonic | ITV | Sky | The Media Production and Technology Show (MPTS) | Warner Bros. Discovery

Delivery Partners: AE Live | AWS | Cloudbass Outside Broadcast | Final Pixel Academy | Finish Line | Grass Valley | Mo-Sys | Raccoon | Residence Pictures | Singular.live

Andy Beale, co-founder of Rise Academy and head of engineering and innovation at BT Sport, said: “The drive toward greater diversity and inclusion in our industry is a fundamental objective of the Rise Academy, and providing free hands-on experience to students through our Rise Up Academy Summer School is an exciting new initiative, in our bid to use our reach to inspire and educate local youngsters about opportunities in our exciting broadcast media industry.”

Beale added: “I would like to thank all of the sponsors for their incredible support which has enabled us to launch this new Rise Up Academy Summer School event this year. I am sincerely grateful for the support from our 100+ volunteers from our industry whose contribution is greatly appreciated.”

Carrie Wootten, managing director, Rise said: “We are extremely excited to be embarking on this incredible new initiative. Our mantra of #inspire #educate and #inform will be weaved throughout the 4 days of workshops and I can’t wait to see how the young people respond.

“I would like to thank our delivery partners, who have come on board with a crazy idea to reach over 500 young people in a week, delivering hands-on practical sessions – this wouldn’t be possible without their support, dedication and drive to change our industry.’’