Merging institutions on paper is one thing. Building a community out of the people who inhabit those institutions is another. The University of Media, Arts and Communication (UniMAC) brings together three distinct institutes: the Institute of Journalism (IJ), the Institute of Film and Television (IFT), and the Institute of Languages (IL).

🇬🇭 Here's What Happened

Each comes with its own history, disciplines, talents, experiences, and, inevitably, its own sense of identity. But if we are to truly become one University, then our merger must mean more than sharing a name. It must also be reflected in how our students interact, collaborate, and see one another. That was the thinking behind Concord.

Concord was conceived through the Office of the Vice President of the UniMAC Students’ Representative Council with a simple objective: to turn our diversity into a source of collective strength. The inspiration was partly personal.

During my campaign for Vice President, I had to move across UniMAC’s various institutes, repeatedly introducing myself and building relationships in spaces where I had few existing connections. That experience taught me something. You can belong to the same University and still know very little about the people, disciplines, and experiences that exist on the other side of it.

📌 Key Details

A journalism student may know relatively little about the world of a film student. A film student may rarely have reason to interact meaningfully with a language student. And unless we deliberately create those encounters, students can complete their university journey having experienced only a fraction of the community to which they belong. I began to wonder: what could we build that would bring these worlds together? Concord became one answer.

As the first unified SRC, we also inherited an existing four-hall system: Osaagyefo Hall, Efua Sutherland Hall, Mandela Hall, and Yaa Asantewaa Hall. We saw an opportunity. Instead of allowing the halls to function merely as administrative or social structures, why couldn’t they become vehicles for integration? Students from IJ, IFT, and IL could belong to the same halls. They could compete together, solve problems together, and, in the process, learn about one another.

And so, Concord developed into a structured inter-hall academic competition.

Each of the four halls selected three students, with one representative drawn from each of UniMAC’s three institutes. The judging panel similarly reflected different areas of expertise. Students engaged across journalism, film, languages, debate, performance, and other creative and intellectual disciplines. But winning was never the only point; the encounters were.

A filmmaker could encounter the perspective of a journalist. A language student could bring an entirely different dimension to a performance. Students from seemingly unrelated academic backgrounds could discover that their individual expertise became more valuable when combined with the expertise of others.

That principle of interdependence became the heart of Concord.

📰 Source: Joy Online Ghana