 I'm Reed McManus and I graduated in 2020 from the University of Newcastle. In my final year of honours, I knew I wanted to do a big animated film and I got the opportunity to pair up with an Australian artist to work on a music video. My name's Heath Johns. I'm the managing director for BMG Australia and New Zealand. The partnership between BMG and the University of Newcastle will provide the type of roadmap for students in the creative industries to pursue a viable career in the arts. The project for the Dune Rats involved our character design so I had to come up with a really in-your-face character but it also developing an entire brand and style to that so it could be applied to extra things that a musical artist might want like merchandise. The band were to use their language absolutely frothing about how talented Reed was. It gave me an insight into what sort of skills I need to be able to create something that a client would want. At university you learn how to really hone in on your creative skills but through an industry partnership you really improve your communication skills. We sat down with Reed. I had a coffee with him in Newspace actually and he told me that he had all of these crazy ideas and no one was willing to pay him to commit them to paper and I said well we'll open up the checkbook and we'll connect you with some of our artists. Heath actually recommended this artist Reed McManus in Newcastle and his drawings are crazy like just really bright vibrant. We ended up doing cereal boxes, we did shirts, hoodies like just unbelievable amount of merch and thank you Reed. The opportunity I was given to work with BMG has really opened up a lot of doors for me and it's a connection that I don't think I would have made without the University of Newcastle. While we're proud of the great things we've achieved via this partnership in a very short space of time this really is only the beginning. I won't be satisfied until we have students from Newcastle making videos for some of the biggest global stars in the world. The advice I would give other students is to grab the opportunity with both hands.