Sarah enters the world of Big Brother

Sarah Robinson has explored the worlds of reality television, documentary making and television production, courtesy of her BA (Honours) degree in Media Studies from the University of Teesside. Now Sarah, 22, from Brotton, Saltburn, is applying for post-graduate study, with the eventual aim of working as a music journalist.

After gaining ‘A’ levels in Art & Design, Geography and English Language at Prior Pursglove Sixth Form College, Sarah went on to complete a Certificate in Newspaper Journalism at Darlington College of Technology. She followed this by enrolling at Teesside.

Sarah said: “I’ve wanted to be a journalist or writer since Primary School. I’ve learned so many practical skills on the degree, such as working with cameras in the University’s television studio, and putting together filmed news items. In our second year we also produced our own documentary for assessment, choosing the theme of ghosts, which involved local research. We filmed around the region in areas where ghost appearances had been rumoured, including Whitby and a Middlesbrough graveyard, and the end result was quite atmospheric.”

Sarah also completed a project about Channel Four’s headline-grabbing Reality television show ‘Big Brother’, which recently finished its third run.

She said: “I looked at Big Brother II and examined whether it was reality television due to the way it was selectively edited, or just exploitation. The University’s resources are really good for Media; we were able to use the Media Archive that holds regional television material going back to the 1950s. I feel more confident at the end of the course, you make a lot of presentations in front of your fellow students and that’s really valuable. You also get to meet a range of people from different places across the UK.”

Sarah is in the first cohort of Media Studies graduates at the University, and the daughter of Barbara and Trevor Robinson.

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