From Steph Groves:

On a sunny Monday afternoon, the second of the successful LSM Alumni Events took place at the Enterprise building.

Lecturers and graduates kicked off proceedings by enjoying drinks and a buffet lunch with oodles of networking to accompany their egg sarnies. Slowly but surely the room started to fill with current students eager to listen to the graduates’ advice. Sarah Barrow then gave a short, but inspiring as ever, introduction and detailed how the day would be formatted.

We began with each member of the graduate panel telling the audience some information about themselves and the roles they have undertaken since life at LSM. On this panel of wisdom there was Phil Stevens, Katy and Rob Dowell, Zoe Easy, Darren Scales and Dave Clancy. Between them they have experienced self employment, community projects, knowledge transfer partnerships as well as a varied and impressive range of skill specialisms.

I would also like to add, at this point, that the event was documented by other, just a brilliant LSM graduates Paul Rook and Steve Young. After the panel’s brief hello the floor was opened to questions, managed by Darren Scales. There was a great mixture of first, second and third year students but the majority of the queries asked were topical for them all and they received some very usable, realistic advice.

We broke for a tea and biscuit break after an hour or so of questions and were encouraged to carry on asking and answering questions throughout that time. There was an exciting  atmosphere in the room that, in my experience, was due to the amount of creatives all in one space at the same time. The camaraderie between staff, students and graduates was obvious and there were lots of big smiles (especially about the cookies and bourbons supplied) and productive networking going on.

In my opinion, it is this feeling of support, encouragement and ambitiousness that makes Lincoln School of Media stand out amongst the plethora of other media courses and events such as this only highlight that. I was party to lots of business card swapping, tweeting and reminiscing.

The current students were well equipped, taking notes and showing huge confidence when approaching the graduate panel individually (as well as the graduates dotted within the audience). Another hour or so later, as the sun outside the fabulous Enterprise building started to dip, the numbers started to dwindle as some attendees had long journeys home. The graduates were huddling together waiting for the much anticipated tour of the Media building and it’s impressive improvements (Some of the graduates hadn’t seen it since 2005!).

Overall, it was such an inspiring and enjoyable day for all, that only reaffirmed (for me anyway) that LSM students, past and present are some of the most driven and passionate creative  people that are sent out into the industry proud ambassadors of Lincoln.