Hi everyone, my name is Becky Savoury and I am currently going into my third year at The University of Southampton, studying Graphic design. The GGC was something that I felt would be good for me and push me out of comfort zone. After completing the interview process virtually, I secured a place on the Great Global Challenge for the summer of 2021. This program lasted 6 days, with different lectures and workshops going on through time zones so everyone in the teams could contribute. This program focused on developing a number of skills and allowed us to work alongside professionals to better our projects. It focuses on marketing and initiative with creating ideas to address the given brief.
This year, the brief was focused on fake news in a post truth world and how we would tackle this issue. We were placed into groups to work together to come up with a solution to the problem. I found this interesting as the groups were made up with people from all over the world which was a really lovely experience. We all worked together and took it in turns to attend workshops and lectures depending on our availability and time zones. This worked well because we communicated and discussed our availability to make the most out of the experience. One of my favourite aspects of the course was the networking and being able to video call my group to work together. With the pandemic I was nervous that reaching out to my team would be a challenge because of time zones, however we made it work and it was a beneficial experience as well as improving my team working abilities. I also thought that my work and ideas were going towards something much bigger than myself and were valued which was such a positive experience.
Our final idea was a prototype where you would be able to find out if the news you were reading was fake. This would be done by filtering and comparing to other stories that would be verified and reviewed by other users. This would allow the audience to determine if their news article was fact or fiction. Everyone’s ideas managed to come together to craft the final idea and prototype, which was then presented to the judges.
For anyone who is considering this challenge for the future I would highly recommend it. Go in confident and really make the most out of all the lectures and workshops that they put out. There are successful and intelligent professionals there to help which will benefit you no matter which background you’re coming from. I feel that I had stepped out of my comfort zone here, but I’m glad I did!