Why study a media foundation year?

Immerse yourself in a wide variety of media platforms to develop your creative and technical skills, as well as your academic skills, before starting your three-year undergraduate degree.

Course overview

The Foundation Year in Media provides you with the opportunity to develop technical, creative, and academic skills across a range of media platforms including graphic design, screenwriting, marketing, branding, video production, digital photography, and blogging. Youll be encouraged to situate your own media production within established traditions and styles while beginning to identify your storytelling voice and signature style. You'll also be introduced to the significance of the creative industries within the UK economy and will be encouraged to begin positioning yourself within this growing and exciting, but competitive, sector.

Understanding that students are joining the Foundation Year from a range of previous experiences, the course is specifically designed to acclimatise students to the university experience. For the first six weeks you'll study just one unit, ‘Belonging, which is tailored to help build a sense of course community and ease you into university life. Your first semester concentrates on building foundations and establishing key skills. Your second semester allows introduces more flexibility and allows you to tailor your learning and your assessment to your own specific interests and your own future undergraduate pathway and potential career.

Face-to-face academic support is available throughout and is complemented by 24/7 access to the Universitys virtual learning environment.

You'll be immediately introduced to the Universitys media production store where you can borrow equipment for your assessments and your own personal projects free of charge.

The course also provides hardware training, especially photography DSLRs and video cameras. There is also training on audio recording equipment and free access to relevant facilities and microphones.

In the course of the year, you also receive hands-on training with relevant software packages, most notably video, photography, and graphic design post-production software. By the end of the year, you will feel competent in photography, video production, and graphic design, giving you a head start on any creative undergraduate degree programme.

Who this course is for

The Foundation Year in Media is designed to help you build basic media-making skills ahead of starting a full undergraduate media-related degree at Solent. Typical candidates either havent yet met the entry requirements needed to start on the first year of an undergraduate course or have spent time away from education.