New annual student awards at MCAST Institute for the Creative Arts

Students attending the MCAST Institute for the Creative Arts were in for a surprise when during their end-of-year event they were informed that, for the first time ever, they were going to be presented with awards, sponsored by the Tumas Fenech Foundation for Education in Journalism.

The awards were deliberately kept a secret – and this was evident from the comments from those receiving the awards: a mixture of amazement and satisfaction that their hard work throughout the year was being rewarded.

Tyrone Grima, Director of the Institute for the Creative Arts, explained that the awards were the FTFEĠ’s idea. After the BA (Hons) degree course in Journalism was launched during this academic year that has drawn to a close, the Foundation approached the ICA to create an award for the best work in journalism.

However, these students attend the common core programme in their first year with both students of Creative Media and Photography, so it was a natural choice to extend the awards to also include these areas: photography, documentary film making, fiction film making and best original work in media. It is in their second and third year that the journalism students will start specialising in var- ious areas of journalism.

Mr Grima announced that work is in an advanced stage for the Institute to open a Journalism Studio by the start of the next scholastic year in October. Facilities will include full access to state-of-theart TV and radio recording facilities, geared up with latest industry-related software and hardware used in the media industry, as well as a fully dedicated location where students can plan, develop, produce and broadcast media content.

This is all part of the preparations for a programme of this nature for which many meetings over several months were held in the run-up to the launch during which the course philosophy was elaborated, the units identified, and the resources secured, with work still ongoing.