The North West’s only Premiership Rugby club, Sale Sharks, has partnered with students from the University of Salford to produce a new video to celebrate the work of the club’s award-winning community team.
A team of three students worked with the club’s biggest names, including England stars Josh Beaumont, Denny Solomona and Tom and Ben Curry as well as Director of Rugby Steve Diamond, on the project, which showcases the work of the club’s charitable arm, the Sale Sharks Community Trust.
The story centres on a day in the life of a 9-year-old girl called Poppy. She’s worried about her first day at school but she’s reassured by slipping on her Sharks hoodie before she leaves home and the emergence of two Sharks players at her shoulders.
As she goes through her day, the club’s star players, which also include TJ Loane, Josh Charnley and club captain Will Addison, guide her through tricky food choices, testing maths lessons and playground activities, highlighting the huge range of educational programmes offered by the Trust.
Jonny Acheson, the Executive Director at the Sale Sharks Community Trust, said: “The team of students at the University of Salford who worked on this project really took on board what we do in the community and we think they have brought it to life really well in this video.
“As a Trust, we work with lots of young people every day, so when the University of Salford approached us to see if we’d be interested in giving their students a chance to work on a real-life brief, we were more than happy to get involved.
“The video really captures the huge range of work that our staff do right across the North West and we really enjoyed working with the students throughout the project.”
The team of students from the University of Salford’s MA Media Production course was led by Colin McKevitt, Megan O’Neill and Hannah Gill, who came up with the innovative script and used their video skills to raise awareness about the Trust’s work.
MA Media Production lecturer Lyndon Saunders said: “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work from the students but also the Community Trust and the willingness from Sale Sharks to let our students take this on.
“The resulting video is a creative, fun and different way of spreading the important message of the great work the Sharks Community Trust does.
“It’s a great example of how the University of Salford is uniquely positioned to work within the real world on live briefs as part of our students’ courses.”
