School trip to the Global Academy

“Fish and chips, no peas please” (sorry Jamie Oliver). It felt good to be back eating school lunches, but this was no ordinary school, it was lunch at the Global Academy. The brand new media school, which has cost over £13 million, was launched recently after a royal opening earlier this year.

Last week, the Radiocentre team took a ‘school trip’ to Hayes to discover more about Global’s new school, training up future radio, TV, podcast and journalism talent. Set on a huge new site, the Global Academy is radio’s own futuristic version of Hogwarts. The facilities on offer are second to none, with multiple state-of-the-art radio studios, a recording studio and even a 360 green-screen news studio that Jon Snow himself would envy.

But great facilities and impressive technology mean nothing without a group of passionate students who have the desire to benefit from the resources available to them. Thankfully in our few hours there, we came across pupils who demonstrated this determination in spades.

Seventeen year old DeMarkay showcased his presenting skills in the radio studio, recording a link for the Academy’s own station Youths Choice, as well as playing us a clip of his interview with a budding singer-songwriter. We also met sixteen year old Phil from Liverpool, who wowed us with a documentary he’d filmed, showing that the students know exactly how to use the cutting edge equipment and software at their disposal. Then there was fourteen year old Nathan, who discovered the Global Academy after hearing an advert on his favourite radio station Heart. Nathan, who has already completed work experience at Smooth, dreams of following in the footsteps of his idol Margherita Taylor by working at Heart.

Our day at the Global Academy was incredibly impressive and the facilities were truly world class, but it was the pupils passion that really stood out. It is clear that the future of radio is not just in good, but determined, obsessive hands.

Simon Cowell hit the nail on the head when he said: “find me a time machine and take me back to when I was at school again”.