Ahmed Hussain did a Hot Shoes placement with the BBC Outreach Face2Face project in Bradford. He helped young people aged 18-24 put together a short film exploring the media as a career.
'I felt challenged, had fun, and I was inspired by the young people!'
My usual day job is on the eighth floor of New Broadcasting House, in London. Whether I’m producing on my regular show on BBC Asian Network, or producing a show at Radio 1 or 1Xtra, it’s a place I am very familiar and comfortable with.
I know the studios like the back of my hand and enjoy working with the staff & DJs across the various networks. This was part of the reason why I chose to work with BBC Outreach – to get me out of that comfort zone, experience a new challenge in areas I wasn’t familiar with but knew I could put my skills to good use.
In my spare time, I regularly teach young people -¬ many of whom are not in education or training – how to get involved in media and more practically within Radio and TV. Hence the similar interests with people who don’t believe the BBC is for them or feel that there are jobs they cannot do. The truth is, they are more than skilled enough to work here.
Face2Face Bradford was a legacy project set-up in the Leeds and Bradford area after 1Xtra had visited for 1Xtra Live in 2015. It was an intensive (but amazing!) week where 15 young people aged 18-24 years were given the chance to chat and meet people from the BBC and other media outlets.
From the start, I had to grasp how BBC Outreach works and spent a few days in Bristol with Jo Sunderland and Shana Rose - who made it super easy! To sit on a board and interview young people who wanted to gain work experience at the BBC also opened my eyes to the other side of interviewing and how someone could bring something extra to the BBC if they got the opportunity.
In Face2Face, our students found out how careers work at the BBC, visited the BBC Salford offices and, of course, worked on a film of their own exploring whether the media was for them. This was hands-on experience for them.
They managed to turn around a film all within three days! As someone whose job is in radio, working on filming and editing visuals (something I love but get very little time to do) was stimulating and I picked up a lot of new skills. The end product of my group’s project was a parody film exploring the given subject - was the media for them. I felt challenged, had fun, every day was different and I myself felt inspired by the young people!
For both Bristol and Bradford I ran an interviewing skills workshop. It’s something I really enjoy doing and also seeing the reactions of those attending. It’s moments like this that you realise that because of our day-to-day jobs we get so ingrained with how smoothly everything runs and everyone knows how it works, that actually the majority of people out there find this a fascinating thing and once broken down – it involves a lot of skills and patience.
I’ve come back to work more excited to work with visual content, confident to ask to sit on boards and run more open days or similar workshops for my departments. It’s exciting to speak to people who see working at the BBC as an aspiration and really just reiterates how great my job is.
