Open Doors - Brighton & Hove Albion

On Thursday, a small group of Year 7 students, accompanied by Mrs Downs and myself headed off on another of our Open Doors careers trips.  This time we going to the American Express Stadium to spend the day learning about the different departments and job roles at the Brighton Hove Albion Foundation. 

We were there with two other schools, a total of 45 students.  We arrived and were shown into the Donatello Suite in the West wing.  Tables were laid out cabaret style, students sat in small groups and were introduced to a BHA Foundation volunteer who would be working with them throughout the day.  The morning consisted of a workshop with a variety of interactive activities and challenges for the groups to work through.  The purpose of the visit was to learn about all the different roles that staff at the Foundation do as well as explaining how, in large organisations the same departments will exist with similar job roles.  There was also a big focus on transferrable skills, with this in mind one of the activities that the students took part in a small networking activity where they were encouraged to find cards that students from the other schools might have. The students all said they found it a challenge, but from what we could see, they all did a great job of speaking to people they'd not met before and learning the foundations and importance of networking and communications. 

After lunch, we were given a tour of the stadium.  As you know that it is an enormous site, we were lucky enough to get to explore a huge amount of it, and it was fascinating.  Our tour guide was great fun, he told us how the stadium was built, what happens behind the scenes at the club, showed us the Directors Lounge and most excitingly, the secret door to the Directors area of the stand where we got to sit in their padded and heated seats to overlook the beautiful pitch.  We saw the Away team's dressing room, which is deliberately sparse and then got to visit the BHA players dressing room which are very luxurious, with padded seats and all mod cons.  We visited the newest entertaining space, The Tunnel Club, stopped off in one of the Executive boxes, and I think the highlight of the tour was to get a chance to run up the players tunnel with the Brighton theme tune playing! There were so many photo opportunities, and I hope that you can see from the photos below what an enjoyable trip this was. 

Mrs Wickens

Careers & Work-Related Learning Coordinator