About ceth

Realistic Work Experiences (RWE)

ceth Realistic Working Experiences offer a range of opportunities for students to develop and recognise their employability skills. These include Publishing, Media Production, Museums and Exhibitions and Drama and Events. RWEs share an ethos of active learning and have been carefully designed to support the development of practical skills and experience whilst offering insights into particular career paths of interest to humanities, social science and creative arts students. By drawing together subject expertise with the ceth Employability Framework for the development and assessment of employability skills, the learning experience of students is enriched. The synergy, resulting from the interface between ceth and subject areas, contributes to both deeper discipline understanding and employability. This Cinema process can be applied across a wide range of subject areas/disciplines and with students who have a wide range of creative and technical abilities.

ceth Distinctiveness

Each RWE provides a supported learning structure that embraces a number of essential elements:
• an external brief / client determines the required output
• a final product (output), is used to evidence the learning process
• the learning process is of a practical, applied nature, developing experiential understanding
• the learning experience integrates with and provides opportunities for extending and / or the enhancement of subject based learning
• employability skills are recognised and evaluated using the ceth Employability Framework.

Employability is specifically highlighted in the opportunities embedded into a range of curricular activities. These include:
• career ‘insights’
• live projects and active learning
• work related learning (wrl) opportunities (including placements)
• use of innovative learning spaces
• creative assessment
• specific employability feedback
• self-assessment & Personal Development Planning (PDP) opportunities. publishing
In all activities students experience applied practice with real outputs and evidence to show prospective employers.

The Publishing RWE provides valuable insights into publishing, enabling collaboration with writers artists, institutions, businesses and the creative community. Using the publishing and edit facilities, a layout and cutting area, idea boards and display areas, A3 colour printing facilities, scanners and appropriate storage facilities, real published products are produced. Click here to find out more about the Publishing RWE.

The Museums and Exhibitions RWE brings to life real exhibitions through acquiring preserving, interpreting and displaying collections and working with museums, exhibitions tourism and the local community. A digitisation centre with PCs, colour printing facilities and high resolution scanners (with the capacity to scan negatives) are used to transfer audio, video and slides for digital storage and retrieval. The RWE provides a work area for the cleaning, storage and preparation of displays, mobile display cabinets and laptops / plasma screens with screen share facilities to display and evaluate collections. Click here to find out more about the Museums and Exhibitions RWE.

The Drama and Events RWE produces real events including staged theatre, conferences and arts festivals. Students have access to state of the art theatre and performance spaces and dance studios. There is the opportunity to work in the community, managing arts events, where they have access to robust outdoor recording equipment. Skills in planning, staging, logistics, promotion together with budgets, sponsorship are developed. Click here to find out more about the Drama and Events RWE.

The Audio, Film and Media RWE gives realistic work experience in film, TV, radio and digital image developing skills in directing, storey telling, post production work Camera and budgeting for moving image production. Students can create content for a range of media, for example podcasts, radio programmes and DVDs. The RWE offers recording and editing equipment, mixing desks, studio presentation microphones, speakers, headphones e.t.c., a DV deck, projection equipment and portable recording equipment for outside broadcasts. Access to the Art House Cinema offers experience of operating a real cinema to exhibit film not shown in the mainstream. You can find out more about the Audio, Film and Media RWE.

Business Incubation Facility

The top floor of the Media Factory is dedicated to the development of a business incubation facility to support and encourage students with interests in enterprise and social entrepreneurship. It provides a full business support service for students, graduates, alumni and SMEs within the Lancashire area, offering office space and facilities, one-to-one business mentors and a range of practical workshops, drop in clinics and networking opportunities.

Since its inception ceth has emerged as a strong and cohesive team which takes pride in its achievements and the contribution it is making to:
• the University’s mission statement and, in particular, its Student Employability and Enterprise Strategy
• the educational needs of its students
• scholarship nationally and internationally
For more information please visit the business incubation facility webpage.

ceth Vision

By 2010 ceth will have enabled all programmes in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to offer students a variety of opportunities to develop, evidence and articulate their own particular employability. ceth is a key player in the delivery of the Faculty’s two major and complementary employability and enterprise themes:

1. To provide all students in the faculty with a variety of inter & extra-curricula opportunities that will enable them to enhance their employability whilst developing a fuller understanding of the theories and methodologies of their academic disciplines through practical and work-related applications. Working closely with colleagues in Schools, ceth contributes to the delivery of the Employability and Enterprise Strategy, the Student Experience Strategy and the Learning and Teaching Strategy. Embedding employability and enterprise modules and ceth values within disciplines helps establish lifelong bonds with learning, other students and the university. ceth modules are also included in the Futures Award, linking with and directly supporting institution-wide enhancement of student employability.

2. ceth will be nationally and internationally recognised for its experience, understanding and enhancement of employability learning.

Through working closely with subject areas, ceth acts as an incubator to hone our understanding and provision of new initiatives before transferring these ideas into a range of contexts. The RWE experiences of staff and students will continue to be used to research, evaluate, and externally disseminate this academic process and framework across the HE sector through conferences and publication of case studies, raising the profile of the Centre with employability CETLs, Subject Centres and the HEA. We will be renowned for our expertise in the enhancement and assessment of employability in creative and benchmarked and pedagogically sound ways.

RWE and Research staff can use their experience of the ceth framework and case studies in curriculum mapping to target discipline staff at local universities, building up a reputation before charging consultancy fees. Positive experiences and examples proffered by ceth alumni will be used both in promotion of ceth activities and to enrich the RWE provision.

ceth will increase the commercial viability and ‘real’ status of RWEs by:
• attracting more employers with external funding
• involving more students with a wider range of abilities and skills
• developing closer relationships and synergies between the RWEs

This will enable us to ‘sell’ our products, designed to industry standards with marketing campaign (e.g. students with English skills, design skills and marketing skills will enable clan-u press to operate as a viable company and to bid for external publications, such as the UCLan conference programme). It will also enable larger projects to be undertaken (e.g. events RWE supporting the launch of publications, clan-u press publishing museums leaflets etc).

The embedding of RWEs in a wide range of programmes will allow us to share a much wider range of discipline expertise, staffing and responsibilities for projects, harnessing the skills of staff from across the faculty.

ceth Sustainability

ceth Sustainability: More students on modules + more staff expertise + more local/alumni/employer publicity/marketability + HEI recognition

Relationships with local colleges and schools will be enhanced by:
• consultancy work on their curriculum
• offering our resources (RWEs)
• taster sessions
• short courses
• summer schools
• projects (e.g. film-making, small publications etc.)
• continued professional development (CPD).

This will raise our local profile and attract more applicants to UCLan.

ceth RWEs will form closer relationships with local employers to attract potential funding opportunities relating to employer engagement. ceth will offer:

• resources
• students and alumni
• existing relationships with local businesses
• academic credibility.

ceth will seek to enable local creative industries to meet target activities and identified educational liaison with schools, local community etc (such activities may already have secured funding). Closer links with the wider creative community will allow ceth to be involved at a funding application stage and to contribute an academic underpinning to future bid proposals. ceth will use existing expertise and equipment in AH&SS to provide CPD and up-skilling for small employers and local organisations in certain technical areas; offering consultancy rather than providing a commercial service e.g. digitalisation, radio production, proof reading etc.