Courses are grouped in three strands: Step Up, Your Life at Work and Mind Your Business. Each strand lasts for one month and is offered four times a year, with multiple iterations of courses within the month. This ensures there are plenty of opportunities for people to forward plan and schedule training around their work and life commitments.
Step Up
Step Up offers training to help individuals coming back into the industry after a break, moving into a new role or responsibility level, or improving skills in unscripted TV.
Courses offered in this strand include:
- Stepping into management 101
- Everything you ever wanted to know about commissioning (but were too afraid to ask!)
- Freelance toolkit for unscripted
- Navigating imposter syndrome
- Networking skills for freelancers
- Career mapping
- Your professional rofile – what to say about what you do
- Social media and casting
- No silly questions – one-to-one camera tutorials
- Generating groundbreaking Ideas
- Camera and sound equipment 101
- Avid for edit producers
- Introduction to the FS7
- The art of sizzles
- Introduction to influencing skills
- Seven deadly sins of self shooting
- Producer/director training – interview techniques and different PD styles
- Producer/director training – shoot preparations and mindset
- Producer/director draining – develop your visual storytelling
- Generating ideas and maximising creative potential
- Your self shooting day – get teady
- Introduction to Avid
- Shooting for the edit
- How to decode the unscripted TV schedule
- Delegation skills
See all current courses here.
Your Life at Work
Your Life at Work offers training aimed at sharing workplace best practice as well as how you and your teams can stay healthy, happy, and productive at work.
Courses in this strand include:
- Reset, reframe, recharge
- Sustainable resilience
- Working in the UK screen industries with English as a second or other Llnguage (ESOL)
- Developing the art of successful negotiation
- HR surgeries
- Mental health awareness for HoDs
- Creative feedback: how to give and receive it well
- Anti-bullying and harassment training
- Mastering giving feedback
- Equality and inclusion essentials
- Managing tricky relationships
- Weekly cuppa
- Finding the balance – career coaching
- Understanding and managing stress
- Deaf awareness
- Mastering receiving feedback
- Mental health first aid taster
- Disability awareness for hirers
- Spotcoaching
- Mindful Monday
- One session wonder: one-to-one problem solving
- How to have difficult conversations at work
- Contributor duty of care and welfare
- Neurodivergence and inclusion in the screen industries
- Welfare and duty of care essentials
- Managing virtual teams
See all current courses here.
Mind Your Business
Mind Your Business offers training in a range of areas related to business management and development, production finance, legal and business affairs, rights and compliance. They give individuals the tools needed to thrive in their chosen field in unscripted TV.
Current courses in this strand include:
- Understanding budgets for editorial teams
- Navigating the rights minefield: business affairs and copyright
- Creating a budget and schedule for unscripted TV
- Managing Excel cost managers
- Introduction and walkthrough of the RIMMS releasing platform
- Content legal workshop
- Sustainable production training
- Introduction to post-production paperwork
- Risk assessments 101
- Budgeting 101
- Using social media posts in programmes
- Data protection for programme makers
- Senior leadership 1-2-1 surgeries
- Leadership and management essentials
- Ofcom refresher
- Presenting and communicating with impact
- Understanding contracts for production managers
See all current courses here.
Connect and Inspire
The Connect and Inspire strand offers a variety of sessions, from in-person networking and online roundtables to in-depth case studies. All are designed to promote the sharing of knowledge and the building of relationships across unscripted TV.
- Toolkit for traumatic TV
- Blue light refresher: legal and compliance considerations when filming with the emergency services
- Neurodiversity: flexibility of thought in TV 2023
- AI for TV development: using generative AI for inspiration, research and assets
- True crime refresher: legal and compliance considerations
- The big connection - production management (in person, Glasgow)
- What unscripted TV can learn from news
- Globalising your development slate
- How to devise, develop and sell an entertainment TV format
See all current events here.
If you have an idea for a Connect and Inspire session please get in touch with the team at USF@screenskills.com.