Article Six: St Austell Brewery

My sixth article for Navigator was my first piece of field journalism. I had contacted the St Austell brewery for a photo project for another module, but when I arrived I found there was far more going on. The brewery was decommissioning a lot of their old equipment and I was invited to spend several days on site following it. This gave me a lot of good information for a piece that fitted into the ‘lifestyle’ section.

Early starts were the order of the day on the three occasions I had to visit. I left home at 0445 the first day but it was quite an exciting thing to cover and it was worth it. Building a relationship with people on site was critical to my piece, and I managed to build a good one with the head brewer. He took me around the brewery and explained how it all worked. Technical details were only part of the story however.

My primary aim on the piece was to construct a story not just about what was going on but about the people and I think I achieved this.

Arranging the visit to the Brewery was quite easy. I emailed them and they seemed quite keen so I went down for a meeting and told them what I planned to do.

Working on the Brewery piece was quite good but I don’t think writing these kind of pieces is going to be something I would want to do in the professional world. I’m glad that I can write them if required as one cannot always choose what job they are going to be asked to do.

All the images from the piece were taken by me.

Correspondence with the brewery -