How a chance meeting led to a Loop media team
I try to keep things as local as I can. The suppliers, the makers, the people who lend a hand. The reality check is that isn't always that simple, and now and then you do have to look further afield, but more often than not someone close by can help.
So that's what I did.
Running Loop alongside my day time job means wearing far too many hats, and if I'm honest, the one I keep dropping is content. i.e. Documenting what we're doing, keeping a steady flow of photos and film, telling the story as it happens, it all takes time I don't always have. So I reached out to someone I'd met through my day job, Matt Desmier, a local champion for innovation at Bournemouth University, to see if he knew anyone who could help keep that flow running.
He introduced me to the Bournemouth University media school, who, as luck would have it, were running the 'work with industry' part of their course. It's a neat idea. They invite businesses to submit a live brief, and the media students take it on as real coursework, developing the concept and then actually making it with the client. In this case it was Loop Straps.
A LIVE BRIEF
It ran for seven weeks. I set the brief, the students shaped it with their own skills, presented their thinking back to me, and then followed it all the way through to a finished piece. And that's exactly what we did.
The brief was to capture the hearts and minds of local ocean sports enthusiasts. Surfers, sailors, kite-surfers, and everyone in between. We wanted to get past the what and into the why. Why do people throw themselves into these cold, demanding, occasionally brutal ocean sports? What does the water actually mean to them? We wanted to capture the essence of what being in to ocean sports really means, and to have it all on film so it would be easy to share.
HEARTS AND MINDS
After a fair amount of preparation, we recruited seven local people from every corner of the local ocean sports world. Veteran surfers and complete newcomers, dedicated sailors, and champion windsurfers, all of them with a story worth telling.
Sure thing, we got what we wanted.
We captured five brilliant stories on film using the local haunt Franco’s Yard as the back drop (Big cheers to Jack), every one shot and interviewed by the talented team at the Bournemouth University media department. None of the contributors had any interest or affiliation with Loop whatsoever, the only connection was a shared one - a genuine love of being on the water.
We ran through a selection of questions and kept it casual, which included:
What has sailing/surfing/kiting taught you about patience?
What have you learned about yourself while on the water?
How has being on the water changed your relationship with nature?
For me it was a real lift, both for the inspiration and for the momentum it gave the whole project.
Perhaps next time we can widen the activities to include submarine activites such as scuba diving, imagine that.
The films will be landing soon, there’s lots of content, but it takes ages to edit down and make good so they’ll most likely trickle out over the next few months.
A big thank you to the guys at Bournemouth Uni media department, and the awesome students. Big cheers to Guy Cribb, Jack at Ounce and Franco’s Yard, Harry from Bournemouth Surf Club, Silvia from Momo, and the talented Christian for stepping in when it was needed. Also want to send thanks to Dan at danpearceeditor.com (also a surfer) for pulling the final edits together.
WHAT'S NEXT
So what comes from a single chance meeting? Quite a lot, as it turns out. We're now working much more closely with some of the students, experimenting with video across social media (we’re off to the 2026 Southampton Boat Show shortly), and capturing the events we turn up to along the way. It's still early days, but it's exciting stuff, and it started, as these things so often do, with a conversation.
More to come.
