Coventry College’s creative media students have been helping to shine a spotlight on the work of one of the official suppliers to the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Five of the college’s students were selected to work with Bristol-based technical production specialists SLX, to take part in an industry experience placement after the company was chosen to be the event’s official broadcast lighting provider.

The Level 3 Creative Media students – Max Malsbury-Allen, Conor Sturmey, Haroon Rafique, Brendan Smith and Stefana Dumbrava – were tasked with producing behind-the-scenes social media content of SLX’s work in a bid to attract future talent and clients for the business.

This involved the students creating Instagram and TikTok accounts – called slx.gameon – with posts that reached more than 900 accounts during the games and gained more than 100 new followers for the company.

This included creating glimpses into the behind-the-scenes operations at SLX’s warehouses on ways that they were working to speed up the installation of lighting when they arrived at venues, through to the company’s work on-site during the build-up to events, including the installation of more than 100 lights on the main hockey field at the University of Birmingham.

Max, who led the students at the start of the project, said: “I loved how the whole Commonwealth Games came together, and seeing them through the eyes of working for a lighting company such as SLX made me really change my views on how these events are set up and held.

“I feel like I have improved in my filming abilities as I took lead in filming the videos from the Commonwealth Games.”

Conor added: “This project has really given me an insight into how a Commonwealth Games of this magnitude is set up and ran, from a lighting perspective.

“This project has definitely made my photography skills better, and I hope that I can use that to my advantage in my later years.”

As part of working with SLX, all students were given a range of hi-tech tools to create content, such as an iPhone 13 Pro, as well as training on photo editing, branding and social media posting.

Micah Parsons, Industry Placement Co-ordinator at Coventry College, added: “Our relationship with SLX started back in December 2021 and developed over the course of the project. Understanding their requirements as a growing business and how our students could play a part in that through the Commonwealth Games, whilst gaining valuable experience was incredible to see first-hand.

“We are incredibly proud to have had some of our students involved with one of the world’s largest sporting events, and it is an experience that will no doubt help them in their future careers.”

Phoebe Currie, from SLX, praised Coventry College’s students for their efforts towards the project.

She commented: “The students managed to grow our dedicated slx.gameon account to 109 followers and achieved over 800 views on a TikTok video they created. This is a great achievement by the student team.

“They took a fresh view of our work to reach a new and younger audience which is something we have not done in our company before.”