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meet the players
Before setting up mpi, Tim Grout-Smith and Lily Poberezhska worked for the BBC as journalists, programme makers and trainers. Read more about us and find our CVs on the About Us page.
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WHAT’S NEW
Since the start of the year we’ve been busy training for academics, researchers and PhD candidates at universities in getting their research into the media. We had our first German workshop at the eminent Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, with a multicultural team from all corners of the world.
We continue to travel the campuses of Britain demystifying the media. We have now trained at 30 universities in England and Wales, and returned to three quarters of them - in one case as many as eight times! They include 10 out of 24 leading research universities in the Russell Group.
We’re also now offering training in communicating through podcasts, and have been invited to run four workshops at Oxford University Computing Services and the University of Southampton. If you want to know what you can learn at the mpi podcasting course, watch this.
Early this year we introduced a lively bunch of D.Phils from Oxford’s cutting-edge Institute of Biomedical Engineering to short documentary film-making.
Despite the cuts, we have found that our competitively-priced, hands-on training is still very much in demand, and we hope the emphasis on impact and dissemination in the new Research Excellence Framework will keep us busy helping academics and scientists to engage with the public through the media.
University training is only one of three strands of work Media Players are currently involved in. In February we travelled to Kiev to complete a British Government-funded project to help Ukrainians to communicate better during their co-hosting of the Euro-2012 football championship. Under the project entitled ‘Euro2012: Everyone Welcome’ we published a brochure of tips in English and Ukrainian on working with the media and recognising inappropriate language and hate speech.
We have also been busy providing online communications help to diversity civil society organisations across Europe under an EU project 'Ethical Journalism Initiative' run by the London-based Media Diversity Institute. In April and May we moved from online to on-site, consulting four of these CSOs in London, Brussels and Warsaw.
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AMONG OUR CLIENTS
International Donors: The World Bank, the European Commission, the British government (DFID, FCO), USAID, OSCE
International organisations: United Nations (WHO, IAEA, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO), Media Diversity Institute, Council of Europe
Universities (UK): Kent, Brunel, Essex, Winchester, St George's, University of London, Oxford, King's College, University of London, Queen Mary's, University of London, University College London, Exeter, Plymouth, Bradford, Kingston, Glamorgan, Sussex, Bangor, Brighton, Hertfordshire, Warwick, Oxford Brookes, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Loughborough, the London School of Economics,Southampton, Surrey, Nottingham, University of the Arts, London; (Ukraine): Kyiv-Mohyla Academy; (Georgia): The Caucasus School of Journalism
Companies: Ogilvy PR (Brussels), ERTICO (EU), TADS Ltd(UK), Linden Consulting (UK), Ikon-Institute(Germany), STB TV Channel (Ukraine), Media Friendly (UK), SAFEGE (Belgium)
    
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WHAT WE OFFER
Training in:
- Dealing with the media
- Communicating research
- Communicating through podcasts
- Communication and presentation skills
- Crisis communications
- Planning and implementing media campaigns
- Basic journalism
- Radio journalism
- Writing online news
Training of Trainers
Project consultancy in:
- Awareness raising
- Public Relations
- Media Outreach
- Development of independent media
- Project design and implementation
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FEEDBACK
“Best staff development course I’ve been on – should be made compulsory”
“I would suggest advertising the course more aggressively and holding it more often”
"This was the best training I've had all year"
Participants, Loughborough University
"I was very impressed that the trainers had taken the trouble to tailor the content precisely to each person's interests. It made the exercises very real" Jill Francis, History PhD Candidate, Birmingham University
"I found it extremely enjoyable and very educational. It filled in the skills we tend to lack as researchers and are rarely given the opportunity to learn. The atmosphere was much more relaxed than I had expected which meant the practical work was less intimidating. Very clear and well-paced, gave us insights into “tricks of the trade” and extremely valuable tips.” Dr Alexandra Pitman, Research Department, Mental Health Sciences, UCL
"The trainers were very knowledgeable and have put a lot of work into researching our areas in order to ask informed questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and I think what I have learned will be very useful" Jane Upton, post doctoral researcher, Sports and Exercise Science, Birmingham University
"Very good preparation with understanding and knowledge of our specific subjects. Very impressed" Dr Chrissie Fenske, Division Manager, St George's, University of London
"Very worthwhile and worth spending a day of my time-a very good number of tips picked up" Dr Prysor Williams, Lecturer, Environment and Natural Resources, University of Bangor
“I found the intense, "hands-on", no nonsense training invaluable and feel now more prepared to be able to be interviewed by media. Also, the unflagging work until the very end of the day I found inspiring!” Margie Louws, PhD candidate, University of Bradford
“Thank you very much for all your hard work, especially in creating individually-tailored questions. Your expertise shone through!” Stella Moss, History Lecturer, Oxford University
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