Media Release
April 2 2008
UniSA graduate banks on new media arts degree
After
an 18-year career in the banking industry, Rachel Mabey has rediscovered
her creative flair as one of the first cohort of students to graduate
from UniSA’s new
Bachelor of Media Arts degree program tomorrow Thursday April 3
2008.
Mabey wanted a career change that included some creativity and, with her
background in banking and computing, an information technology degree
with a multimedia sub-major was her first choice.
What Mabey didn’t bank on was the creative pull of multimedia, rather
than IT. After just a few weeks into her studies, she transferred to a
multimedia degree for two years before transferring to the media arts
program, which was launched in 2007, gaining credit for courses that
were common to both programs.
As part of her study program Mabey travelled to Africa twice to do
camera and video filming. “I went there initially on a church mission
with my business partner and followed a medical team around the
hospitals for a week. On my return I made a 10-minute fundraising
documentary for the team called
Hospitals of Hope Africa,
which I was able to hand in as an advanced production project,” Mabey
said.
“Some six months later I returned to Africa with a family from Rwanda
who had escaped the genocide and hadn’t been back since. I followed them
around with a camera for a week,” Mabey said.
“Both of these projects were made possible with University support,
which enabled me to take film equipment overseas. It was fantastic and
wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t at UniSA,” she said.
Since then the organisation Hospitals of Hope Africa was formed and
Mabey’s documentary has been used to raise funds for the rebuilding of a
hospital in Africa. Mabey had an integral part in the organisation and
because her sub-major was web design, she created a 50-page website for
the organisation www.hospitalsofhopeafrica.org, which includes podcasts
of some of the video footage that she produced.
Mabey has applied to do her honours degree but will take a year off to
do more hands-on study. She has formed a multimedia-based production
business, dollshouse
productions, in partnership with a colleague and is creating a
medical training DVD for surgeons, as well as doing some website design
work.
“The media arts degree has given me the best opportunity to work in this
exciting field of film, television and web design,” Mabey said. “Without
the degree, I would not have known where to start on web design, or
learnt all of the rules and regulations required to design web projects
correctly. For me it’s been perfect for developing my new career path
and I would definitely recommend UniSA’s media arts program to other
students.”
Contact for interview
- Rachel Mabey mobile 0402 149 136 email rlmabey@bigpond.com
Media contact
- Geraldine Hinter office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861832 email geraldine.hinter@unisa.edu.au