Tag: communications (page 3 of 3)

7 Simple Ways to Avoid Fast Fashion and Help the Planet

June 8, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Fast fashion is a major contributor to plastic pollution and environmental damage. Melissa Pearson explores seven simple ways you can play your part in reducing this damage.

Conscious Clothing?

A recent report published in Nature suggests that the environmental impact of fast fashion is widespread: the industry produces 8-10% of global CO2 emissions – that’s up to 5 billion tonnes  – a year. It’s also a major contributor to microplastic pollution in our oceans.

The UK charity Clothes Aid meanwhile  reports that £140 million worth of used but still wearable clothing goes to landfill every year in Britain.

In the face of such grave statistics, change can seem impossible. But there are things each of us can do.

1. Educate yourself

Avoid fast fashion brands as much as possible. But how can you tell if a brand is fast fashion?

2. Switch up your shopping habits

Shopping can be fun but trying to cut down on buying clothes when you don’t need them is a great way to begin cutting out fast fashion for good. It helps you save money, too. Before you buy, ask yourself if you really need it.

3. Buy sustainable fashion

Sustainable brands tend to be more expensive but often last longer. If you can’t afford sustainable fashion, then following the other steps will help.

4. Shop second-hand

When avoiding fast-fashion, second-hand clothes are your best friend. If everyone bought one used item in a year, it would save 449 million pounds of waste – equivalent to the weight of a million polar bears.

eBay, Vinted and Depop are popular places to buy and sell second-hand clothes – and to look for something specific. If you enjoy clothes shopping in general, charity shops and vintage fairs are a great alternative to high street shopping.

5. Care for your clothes

According to Traid.org, extending the life of a garment by an extra nine months reduces its environmental impact by up to 30%. Pay attention to how to wash and dry your clothes to make them last longer. And if something needs a small repair, don’t throw it away – fix it yourself. The internet will show you how.

6. Follow the experts

To learn more about how to avoid fast fashion, these are all good places to start: Fashionchecker.org, Cleanclothes.org, and Aja Barber and Labour Behind the Label on Instagram.

7. Spread the word

Once you have educated yourself and found ways to avoid fast fashion that work for you – tell your friends and family. By helping them to change their habits you’ll be increasing the ripple effect of your good deeds.

About the author:

Melissa Pearson took City’s Introduction to Copywriting Course taught by Maggie Richards. She is a History graduate hoping to pursue a career in copywriting.

For more about our short writing courses, visit City’s website.

 

Five things I’ve learned about writing for business by teaching writing for business

March 24, 2022 / / 0 Comments

By Jenny Stallard

Writing for Business is a, well, tricky business. The balance of the formal and informal, the words we choose being a key part of whether a client will perhaps want to meet us, work with us or indeed pay us.

 

In the 8-week course that I teach for City, University of London, we cover a lot of the practicalities of Writing for Business, from blogs and bios to emails and CVs. However, there is always a lot of discussion about the emotional side of things: how we might develop a tone of voice unique to us and our business, the formality vs informality of email styles and how to address different clients or potential clients.

 

These are also all things I come across in my daily life as a self-employed coach and writer! And it means that, during the course, I always have moments of clarity about my own Writing for Business. Tutoring on Writing for Business (WFB) has actually taught me a lot about the methods and choices we make when it comes to our language in business.

 

 

Here’s what I’ve learned:

 

1: Our style and tone of voice is always a work in progress. Particularly if we are writing for our own business. I have found that my style has evolved more since teaching the course, too, as I hear the lessons each time and apply them to my own Writing for Business! We must, of course, adhere to style guides where appropriate, but being ‘brave’ enough to build our own style is something we should and can work on constantly. And, it’s OK if it changes over the course of time, too.

 

2: The types of writing for business are always expanding. At the beginning of each 8-week course, we brainstorm what forms writing for business can come in. There is always something new from someone to add to the list. For example, we discuss whether podcasts are WFB (I would argue that the show notes are), or TikTok and Instagram (well, captions are writing, aren’t they?).

 

3:  If in doubt, probably leave it out! This is particularly true for the emoji, which comes up for discussion in the module I teach on emails and etiquette. An emoji in an email is a total no-no for some, while, in the media industry and particular newsletters, I often see emojis in the subject line and indeed the body of an email. As with everything, if you’re considering using an emoji, think whether it adds anything, and always go back to whether the client/reader would be on board with it.

 

4: Sometimes the smallest words are the best. One of the parts of the course I love teaching is about calls to action – those small sets of one to three words where a site, article or post gets us to click to either sign up, buy, or find out more. Often, we can see writing for business being about the long form writing, from reports and brochures to presentations and articles. And of course, it is! But there is a real skill in shortening words down, and, in particular, self-editing. Writing a call to action, an 8-word headline or just 100-word bio is often the most satisfying as we work our magic to make the fewest words say the most.

 

5: The biggest challenge isn’t the words, it’s the confidence to write – and publish – them. From a blog post to an email asking for ‘that’ meeting about a promotion/pay rise, to a social media post or a profile and bio. Selling – whether it’s a product or ourselves – using words is hard. Often what holds us back is ‘but what if nobody reads it?!’. Having the courage to publish, press send, or upload our writing for business is perhaps the biggest challenge of all. I hope that my writing this piece, and putting it ‘out there’ inspires readers and course members to do the same.

 

 

Jenny Stallard teaches City’s 8-week Writing for Business course. For information on our other writing courses, visit our website.

 Register for our Virtual Open Evening next Thursday 31 March at 6pm

My Short Course Experience : Gillian Belchetz

January 17, 2022 / / 0 Comments
Gillian Belchetz

Gillian Belchetz

We spoke to Gillian Belchetz who completed the Writing for Children 10-week course last year, to understand what she learnt from the course and has been up to since.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am from Lancaster but have lived in Leeds for 40 yrs. I was a nurse for 37 years but also love writing, so undertook and MA in Writing for Performance and Publication at Leeds Uni as a mature student. My first book, ‘A Game of Consequences’ was published in 2015 by Fisher King Publishing, and raised money for The Alzheimers. In lockdown, and inspired by my grandchildren, I started writing for children and my first kids book was published at the end of 2021. I volunteer one day a week at a homeless charity in Leeds, St George’s Crypt, and wanted to write something that was both engaging and would raise the issue of homelessness with children. I have sold almost 1000 copies and raised over £3,500 for St Georges. Supporters have bought 350 of these books to be donated to local schools, and this year I will be visiting schools, giving them copies of the book, doing a reading and talking to the children. I love walking our dog Winnie, and am learning to play bridge – badly!

Why did you choose to take this course at City?

The Writing for Children course was well structured and specifically aimed at learning the craft of writing for children, which is similar to writing for adults, but also different.

What did you learn on the course?

Each week introduced a different aspect of writing so that we discussed how to open a book, plot, character, endings, editing etc. It was thorough and a lot was crammed into ten weeks. The different requirements for picture books up to Teen literature. Brilliant.

How did you find the virtual classes?

Excellent. A great mix of information delivery and participation.

What are the key things you have taken away from the course?

Great examples of books for different age groups were used which I find a useful reference. Writing exercises to inspire and motivate. Information on structure and how to keep a child’s attention.

What have you achieved since completion? 

I wrote and had published ‘Clara’s Geni-Ous Plan – To help a lady who is homeless,’ and experienced working with an illustrator for the first time.

I liaised with Booths Supermarkets, (Waitrose of the North) who have been selling it and donating their profits to the homeless charity I am supporting. It has been a roller coaster and a real thrill to see it on a supermarket shelf.  You can order the book now through this online form.

To find out more about the course Gillian took visit our Writing for Children webpage and for more about our other writing courses browse our course finder tool.

 

City Short Courses Open Evening , December 2019

Getting to know you: Our winter short courses open evening

December 17, 2019 / / 0 Comments

City, University of London were proud to host our winter Open Evening on Tuesday 10th December 2019.

Our Open Evenings are a great opportunity to visit our campus and meet out tutors – and this December we had a great turnout of guests, looking to find out more about all the evening and weekend courses that we offer at City. We offer light refreshments and some free gifts to take away with you.

City Short Courses also offers a range of taster sessions – 40-minute classes to give you a flavour of what it is like to study at City. We are hosting our next Languages Taster Event on Wednesday 15th January 2020. We will be running taster sessions in seven languages – Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. Find out more and book your place on the webpage.

We have over 120 courses across subject areas – business, computing, creative industries, languages, law and writing. Next term starts Monday 20th January 2020, enrol online!

Get ahead with your business writing

August 16, 2019 / / 0 Comments

By Howard Walwyn

Almost everyone in their daily work needs to write clear, accurate business English, whether that is in the form of emails, letters, reports, minutes, digital copy, marketing materials, technical manuals or other formats. Even tweets are increasingly used as a marketing tool for both Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer communications.

Yet not everyone is confident that their business writing skills are up to the standard they would like. Many people working in communications departments, HR or marketing teams, regardless of their native language, strive to write refined and polished business copy.

Similarly people working in IT or quantitative fields are often less comfortable writing business English than they are dealing with code or numbers and see the need to obtain specific training in business writing skills, to help them reach an even better standard of written English.

City, University of London’s Writing for Business short course gives hands-on practical training in the principles of clear business English and how to write good business copy, whether it’s an article, a press release, a CV, a product review or a letter or email. It also covers some of the wider aspects of being a writer, such as research and planning, interviewing, promotion and marketing; and legal and editorial topics. The course explains how the key principles behind writing clear business English – such as brevity, clarity and consistency – are the same, whatever the length and format of the piece you are writing.

Due to high demand, we are delighted to be offering the course on two nights of the week.

On Tuesday evenings the Writing for Business course is taught by Howard Walwyn who has spent 30 years writing and editing copy in the financial sector, focusing mainly on risk and regulatory content. He now uses that experience, alongside his degrees in English Language & Literature and Economics, to help clients and students write clear business English – both in the financial sector and in other areas of business.

Every Thursday, the course is taught by Maggie Richards, a freelance journalist and copywriter with 20 years’ experience writing for the likes of The Guardian and The Times and working with all kinds of businesses from sole traders to global giants, such as Harrods and Marks & Spencer.

Writing for Business is a 10-week short course starting in October.

Digital training and the digital skills gap

May 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments

by Dionisios Dimakopoulos

City Short Courses, part of City, University of London, worked with London digital agency MintTwist to create a study analysing the digital skills gap.

The study surveyed over 100 professionals who studied a digital marketing related short course with a goal to understanding:

  • Why they are seeking additional digital marketing training
  • Issues they are currently facing
  • What they hope to attain from studying a digital marketing short course at City, University of London.

We surveyed City Short Course students from 2007 – 2015. The group consisted of marketing professionals within SEO, content, social, advertising, web design and development.

“The biggest challenge in my industry is hitting the right digital marketing channels and maintaining our individuality against our competitors”

Edward Carter, SEO Manager, industry: Engineering and Manufacturing

The survey identified three key elements professionals listed as instrumental in them completing a digital marketing short course.

  • Digital’s constant state of change and evolution
  • The online competition
  • Training required to upskill internal resource on digital

Biggest issues for your company:

  • 15% – competitors
  • 19% – digital change
  • 26% – training, skills and internal resources

Biggest issues for your industry:

  • 16% – competitors
  • 16% – digital change
  • 6% – training, skills and internal resources

Find out more about short courses in digital marketing at City, University of London.

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