Case Study Videos

Aspire to HE (Elite Sports)

University of Wolverhampton

Our Brief

We were asked to create a series of case study videos featuring celebrated athletes to promote an initiative led by our local higher education provider!

The Aspire to HE initiative is a partnership of colleges, led by the University of Wolverhampton and funded by the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP), which aims to inspire people from less advantaged backgrounds to venture into higher education (HE) by the year 2020.

The programme does this by providing young people in the Midlands with information and opportunities to enable them to make informed decisions about higher education and their futures.

For this project, we were asked by the team at the initiative to create a series of videos which would not only stress the benefits HE can provide for budding athletes, but would also highlight how it can lead others into a wide variety of careers within the sports industry!

Aspire to HE (Elite Sports)

To tackle this brief, we were thrilled to team up with four outstanding young athletes who are either current students at or graduates of the University of Wolverhampton:

Dean James (3x World Muaythai Champion)

Kristian Thomas (Olympic medal winning gymnast)

Mimi-Isabella Cesar (Commonwealth Games rhythmic gymnast)

Lauren Johnson (Professional boxer)

For the main version of the case study videos for this project – which you can watch above – we hear from all four sportspeople as they describe how going into higher education has been of benefit to them.

In two of our case study videos seen below, Kristian and Mimi-Isabella explain how higher education has also provided them with an invaluable support team – a team made up of those who have progressed through higher education to become sports psychologists, nutritionists, and sports scientists alongside other professions!

These testimonies from the athletes were really important, as they highlight how aspiring to HE can open pathways for young people which they would otherwise find difficult to access.

For more on the Aspire to HE initiative, visit here.