From 1989 to 1991, I studied Media Studies at South Mersey College. It was a fantastic course, and those years were among the best of my life. For the past year, I’ve been researching the college’s history, and what follows is what I have found.
South Mersey College was established on 1 September 1986, following a reorganisation of Liverpool's further education service. It was formed by merging two existing institutions, Riversdale College of Technology and Childwall Hall College of Further Education. The idea was to bring together two colleges with quite different traditions and strengths, creating one better placed to meet the changing demands of further education.
Riversdale had a strong technical and vocational tradition, and its history included a spell as a naval training establishment. Its culture was fairly hierarchical, reflecting the backgrounds and outlook of many of its staff. Childwall Hall, by contrast, had built up a strong community ethos and a reputation for opening up education to people who might otherwise have been shut out of further education. It was also the more innovative of the two, having introduced courses in areas such as American Studies, Media Studies and Access to Higher Education.
So the merger was about more than putting two colleges under one management. It meant trying to blend different institutional cultures and approaches to education. John Frain, who became principal of the new college, knew this would take time. In his book about the college's development, The Changing Culture of a College, he explained that management at first favoured a traditional hierarchical structure, believing that organisational change needed to move at a manageable pace. Too much change too quickly risked creating uncertainty and putting unreasonable demands on staff.
In its first few years, though, South Mersey College expanded its curriculum considerably. New courses included Trades Union Studies, Special Needs education and Media Studies, alongside a growing range of adult education, community education and access to university courses. The college also tried out new ways of delivering education, particularly through Open Learning. By 1988/89 it was running an increasingly diverse programme of courses, and management was starting to rethink the organisational structure put in place when the college was formed.
Media Studies was one of the areas that grew out of the more innovative Childwall Hall tradition, and by 1988/89 it was an established part of the college's ecosystem, and was gaining a growing reputation among media organisations on Merseyside. The college had secured an Urban Aid grant of £60,000 to buy Media Studies equipment over three years, and it was also developing a full-time BTEC Diploma in Media Studies. By September 1989, the course was headed by Carol Duerden.
This development did not come without difficulties. The closure of the Childwall campus meant Media Studies had to move to the Riversdale campus. John Frain's book admitted that this had caused problems, though he noted that they were being kept under review.
There were apparently tensions within the department. Some staff complained that it had been hard to get hold of much of the equipment they needed, but these were practical concerns rather than criticisms of how the course was run. They may well have reflected the difficulties of establishing and maintaining a fairly new course in a college going through major organisational change, and they should be seen alongside the wider problems the principal recorded: the relocation of Media Studies, staff shortages, and the pressure to develop new provision while resources remained limited.
This was the background against which Media Studies was operating in September 1989, when I started the course. As a student, I knew nothing of these issues, and my experience of it was a very positive one. I was simply delighted to be there.
