Travel Journalism in Brussels

All Journalism students are eligible to participate on this opportunity. Postgraduate journalism students, as well as second and third year Creative Writing students enrolled on Journalism modules are also welcome to apply. There is a maximum of 30 places available, with a minimum of 15 participants required for this opportunity to take place. Students are recommended to check the eligibility criteria before applying.

Please note, if you have already participated on or been accepted for a DMU Global overseas trip between September 2023 and August 2024 you are not eligible to apply for this opportunity.

Students are recommended to apply for no more than 2 overseas opportunities. Further application submissions will not be considered.

Calling all budding travel writers! This DMU Global trip aims to build your writing skills and strengthen your portfolio to dazzle potential employers. 

Our destination is Brussels, a city rich in art, culture and history. With world-class museums, striking architecture, elegant shopping arcades and a vibrant nightlife, the Belgian capital is rightly in the top-20 most-visited cities in Europe. And what’s not to love about a city that reveres chocolate, beer, chips and comic books?

Brussels is also an ideal place to take your first steps in travel journalism!

Our trip – by Eurostar, from London St Pancras – gives you a chance to gain practical experience of a real-world travel-writing assignment. Tutors and students will work together to shape a publishing schedule for the trip, with advance planning meetings to allocate stories before we leave and daily morning conferences while we’re there.

Students will sharpen their story-finding and writing skills, with the finished features published in the travel channel of the DMU Journalism department’s own news website. We’ll also select three students to act as social media editors on the trip too, which will be an extra string to your bow on your CV. 

If you enjoy writing and reading travel pieces, reviewing exhibitions or shows, and seeking out the unexpected, and you fancy doing it all with friends from your course in the beautiful city of Brussels, then this is the trip for you. 

Learning objectives

Participating in a DMU Global opportunity can help you develop knowledge, skills and competencies that enhance your studies. The objectives of this trip to Brussels are:

Prior to the trip students will attend at least one forward-planning conference, to decide on which stories to cover, how they will be covered and who to interview. There will also be an introductory class on travel journalism for those students who didn’t take last year’s Lifestyle Journalism module. 

It’s a condition of the trip that all students submit at least two travel pieces for the publication on the Leicestershire Press website. Upon return, there will be a mandatory travel writing day back at DMU for any students who haven’t completed/uploaded their stories to the site.

Cultural activities

Whilst in Brussels, students will have free time to explore the city’s plentiful cultural and historical sites. Suggested activities include visiting the gasp-inducing Atomium or the five-days-out-in-one Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (current exhibition: 100 Years of International Surrealism), taking a beer-and-chocolate walking tour or following the street-art trail to the Comics Art Museum.