SC253564

Personal Details

First Name: Basa

Last Name: Metreveli

Date of Birth: 03/04/1994

Do you hold dual No

citizenship?:

Preferred Interview Tbilisi

Location:

Contact Details

Email: metrevelibasa@gmail.com

Additional Email: basa@redberry.ge

Telephone Number: +995598143614

Address Line 1: 187, Davit Agmashenebeli Avenue

Address Line 2:

Country / Territory of Georgia

Residence:

City: Tbilisi

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 Home Phone:

Skype ID:

Country/Territory of Georgia
Citizenship:

Specify the length of time

living in the 25
country/territory of
permanent residence:

Education

Study Institution Dates Type Subject Course Scale Result

Free University
10/09/2012 - Sociology & Social Sciences
Undergraduate of Tbilisi BA GPA 2.72 out of 4
29/07/2016 Anthropology and Governance
(Georgia)

Ilia State Philosophy:

03/10/2016 - Not yet
Postgraduate University MPhil Philosophy Philosophical
29/02/2020 available
(Georgia) Anthropology

Work Experience

Are you currently employed in full or part-time work, or a voluntary or internship role?

Yes

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 Current
Job Title / Hours worked Total number of Total number of Employment
Employer / Dates
Position held per week weeks hours Type
Organisation
Co-founder and 14/10/2013 - Full time
Arsad Bar 40 142.29 5691.65
Managing Partner 30/09/2016 employment

Marketing and Ad 02/11/2015 - Part time

Cavea Cinemas 20 51.16 1023.17
Sales Manager 25/11/2016 employment

Account and Digital 28/03/2016 - Full time

Redberry 40 79.69 3187.78
Project Manager 24/11/2017 employment

Digital
05/12/2016 - Full time
Redberry Communications 40 46.56 1862.21
24/11/2017 employment
Strategist

Director Of Digital 27/11/2017 - Full time

Redberry 40 88.37 3534.91
Products 30/09/2019 employment

01/10/2019 - Full time

Redberry Senior Copywriter 40 4.87 194.69
07/11/2019 employment

2/5 - Essay Questions

In this section, you are asked to answer a series of short essay questions on the following
areas: leadership and influence; networking; studying in the UK and your long-term career
goals.

As you are aware, Chevening is the UK Government’s international awards programme aimed
at developing global leaders. This section allows you to provide examples of your leadership
skills and potential, and to describe how you would use your time in the UK to develop
professionally and academically, build professional networks, and build lasting positive
relationships with the UK.

Please use examples to support your answers. All answers must be a minimum of 100 and a
maximum of 500 words.

Leadership and influence

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 Unbeknownst to me, I started developing leadership skills since I was a youngster. I was a part of the local
football club's youth team, all the while dreaming of playing for "Manchester United". 2 years into football, I
was chosen to be the captain. With the guidance of my coach, I started internalizing what it meant to be a
leader and how to embrace responsibilities. In the following years, I had learned how to support,
encourage and coordinate teammates to create the team spirit, the most important aspect of any team
sport. As a captain, I understood that I had to be exemplary: the most disciplined, dependable and
persistent. It was me, who didn't have a right to be weak and make lame decisions. Going through this
experience while in my teens, has prepared me, for what was to come.
One day, the dream died. But already, new objectives had arisen to take its place. When I was 19, during
the second year of university I started a business with my friends. An underground bar in Tbilisi, named
"Arsad” (“Nowhere”), there I spent 3 years. Starting from scratch we've created one of the most popular
and influential places for the Georgian underground scene, establishing a unique space for experimental
music and stand-up comedy. As a managing partner I came face to face with very real-world problems:
discussing and executing decisions with partners, negotiating with suppliers, managing 15+ staff and most
importantly - how to reach and stay on top of the fast-developing competitive market.
And finally, most of my leadership experience comes from my job as the "Director of Digital products" at
the digital communications and transformation agency - "Redberry". I got here after I had exhausted
myself from the bar and decided to try something new. I joined the team in 2016 when it was still a small
start-up. During the growth of our agency from 10 to 70 employees, I tried myself at many different roles
such as an account\project manager, communication strategist and finally, 2 years ago, when we started
forming a digital product development team separately, I was nominated to be the lead and manage it. My
mission was to form an effective organizational structure and make it work. There I had to try various
different approaches to deal with my team constructed of uniquely bright and complex individuals. I dealt
with problems by actively communicating with the team members, all the while trying to be as empathetic
as possible. We ended up with a custom Agile method with well-defined positions, refined processes and
properly shared responsibilities. While myself, being responsible for the digital product strategy and
product design. I’ve led a 25 individuals strong team of product managers, web-developers and web-
designers to the creation of many successful digital products. We executed 60+ projects, helped our
clients grow and published international award-winning works.
I hope all this gives you clear insights into my personality and precisely tells the story about my
capabilities as an influential leader.

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Networking

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 My unending curiosity got me deeply connected with some interesting people, willingly sharing and
discussing the views, beliefs and the information we had about commonly interesting ideas. Due to my
lifestyle and communication skills, I encountered and stayed in touch with relatively a lot of them. I
observed that even the people with the same interests may have problems with communication and need
someone in between to understand each other. I believe the right communication may be the key to
solving most of humanity’s problems. Entering the adult life I discovered the connections I already had
was a great asset for my professional life, because in professional networks people are mostly about the
same, just in a professional way: information sharing, understanding each other’s needs in looking for the
situations to help and be helped. It’s the reciprocity principle. I started paying more attention to keeping
those relationships intact to protect the network I already created and continue my way of expanding it.
More my network grows more I appreciate it’s significance to me and vice versa, especially in helping
people that are alike in finding and creating new opportunities for each other.
My personality always affected my job descriptions. For now, in “Redberry” besides having an everyday
normal job, I have become a representative of my company in public and foreign affairs. I’m responsible to
communicate with the outer world about our interests, mostly with the associations and advertising
festivals, local and international. Let’s say a few words about the “Association Of Communication
Agencies In Georgia”. “ACAG” consists of all the big agencies and its main goal is to help the young
Georgian marketing and creative industry to evolve. On annual monthly “ACAG” meetings, my role is to
represent my agency’s interests and debate it with others. We discuss and solve the problems agencies
collectively encounter on the market to create a healthy environment, raise awareness about our industry
and to form connections with international associations, letting Georgia be a part of the global picture.
With my involvement “ACAG” became part of the “Art Directors Club Europe” and this year, with the help
of the contacts I already had there, I managed to nominate Redberry’s Creative Director to be the jury of
ADCE festival 2019. I also help the association to organize events, like “Cannes Young Lions Georgia”
competition to select the best Georgian young creatives and send them in Cannes to fight there for the
“the best in the world” title. Being in this position privileges me to attend the biggest and the most
important events in our industry. I had the honour of attending Cannes Lions 2017 and Web Summit 2018
in Lisboa, meeting colleagues from all around the world, bonding the new relationships, getting inspired by
them and discovering collaboration opportunities on the global market.
I’m confident I can play an impressive role in the Chevening community and contribute as much as I can
take from it. I’ll tell you about it in my future plans.

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Studying in the UK

I have selected three Visual Anthropology courses, cause I strongly believe that this is the subject where
all the different paths I have walked in my career finally comes together. I’ll tell you why: growing up, I
noticed I had a stubborn curiosity about everything around me. I was haunted by those banal philosophical
questions: Why am I here and now; What all this really is about; How the world around me works... Most
of all, I was fascinated by human creatures and their stories.This reflected on my BA degree in Social
Sciences, snooping around in all of the studies about human nature. I became especially interested in
examining people of different cultures. As a person who believes in holistic approaches, because of it’s
interdisciplinary means - incorporating knowledge from any discipline it needs to explain human
behaviour, I fell in love with anthropology. On my BA I covered three courses of anthropology:
Archeological, Social and Political.
I almost always have been working parallel to my BA studies, and though it required of me sacrificing all
my free time, I still tried to do both, cause I clearly was seeing the influence of my academic studies on my
job performance and vice versa. Especially, when I started working at a communications agency,
knowledge of all the basic traits of human animals and my own Georgian culture came in handy not only
with management tasks but also while working on digital product designs, coming up with the
communication strategies, working on the video/photo content production for commercial purposes that
should be appealing for our client brand’s target audiences.
After graduating, I decided to continue studying without taking a break and I entered the MPhil in
Philosophical Anthropology to deepen my theoretical knowledge.
Here, working on the final thesis in “Anthropology of Everyday Life” my lecturer required me to represent
visual ethnography as a part of the research and as I investigated how to properly do it I came across the
Visual Anthropology.
I realized that I could transform my long-time affection on one hand, for documentary photography,
filmmaking and storytelling and on the other hand, for the significance of scholastic education into doing
multimedia ethnography projects for academic researches.
Lucky me, Visual Anthropology incorporates my experience from both, professional and academic life: my
full technical knowledge of doing photo/video production from my time in a communications agency and
strong theoretical basis in the theory of anthropology.
All three courses I’ve chosen in UK offer a particular combination of anthropology with practical training in
film-making, editing, visual methods, photography, sensory ethnography through the study of the politics,
ethics, and aesthetics of representation. “The University of Manchester” is not first on the list only because

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 of my childhood dream, but because of Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology - recognised as the
world's leading center. These will provide me with throughout knowledges on applying anthropological
studies to the actual making of visual artefacts. That’s all I need to study for my future plans.

Career Plan

I believe communication may be the key to solve most of our problems and problems are not what we are
lacking in Georgia.
I was born in the ruins of the Soviet Union in one of the most politically problematic regions and it’s been a
place of wars, conflicts, poverty, and struggle since.
There is a huge communication gap inside and about the whole Caucasus. On the one hand, inside the
region, as conflicted nations are fallen into hatred and ignorance towards each other and on other hand,
global problem of the outer world having any real clue what and why is going here, as the region is
historically and culturally complex with a huge ethnical variety.
What the region needs the most is good translators and communicators of the cultural contexts and social
processes inside the region. That’s where I see myself.
Upon my return, I want to move from the commercial sector and direct my whole attention to the research
of people’s lives in problematic regions and lives of refugees, especially in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
doing visual ethnography work and sharing it to the rest of the world. A Georgian popular saying goes:
“the eye eats and the eye drinks”, I believe that the inspiration the visual anthropology can be, would grant
me the means of executing those deeds. This old Georgian wisdom actually emphasizes the superiority of
one particular human sense over the others. For me, it reflects the fact that if verbal languages may be
different, visual language is the same for everyone. It’s the only common language every human knows
which makes it a unique international communication tool.
Back home, I want to start working as a freelance photo-reporter for “Open Caucasus Media” and
“Chaikhana.org”, politically independent media platforms, doing an in-depth analysis of the issues in the
region. Stories are mainly concentrated on women, rural communities, under-represented and conflict-
affected groups. Their mission meets mine to inspire and foster cross-border understanding of the
Caucasus by creating an original and diverse picture of the region through non-fiction storytelling. I
already have a good relationship with them, as I helped my friend, documentary photographer Elene
Shengelia to shape and publish her photo stories there.
I also plan to continue my academic life at first as a culture researcher, then as a PhD in a related field, in
“Ilia State University”, where now I’m doing master thesis with visual ethnography on post-soviet criminal
tattoo culture.

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 I see a big opportunity in working in academic circles and in being a part of the global network of 50,000
Chevening alumni and of its events, such as the debates and conferences, as it gives me the platform to
make my voice heard internationally, to build bridges with future global leaders and thus have better
chances of resolving the problems in my region. To conclude, I want to play a significant role in improving
our region by speaking out on international platforms about our struggles and our need for international
support.

3/5 - Application Information

In this section, you will need to complete details about your intended university course choices,
English language qualification, referees, and UK immigration status. Please ensure that you
read the detailed instructions and information on the website. If you need to do more research,
you can return to this section later but you must complete this before submitting your
application.

University application details

Rank - University Course and Type Have you applied?

1 - University of Manchester Visual Anthropology (MA) No

2 - Goldsmiths, University of London Visual Anthropology (MA) No

3 - UCL (University College London) Material and Visual Culture (MA) No

References

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 Capacity in which
Name Job Title Organisation Email Status
Known
Gaga Darsalia CEO Redberry gaga@redberry.ge Employer Reference Created

tamta.khalvashi@iliau Academic (school /

Tamta Khalvashi Associate Professor Ilia State University Reference Created
ni.edu.ge college / university)

Immigration

Do you hold a valid passport for your country/territory?

Yes

Passport/ID number

11AA59216

Do you hold refugee status?

No

Do you hold any other form of legal residency?

No

Have you ever been to the UK?

No

Do you have a valid UK visa or permission to enter or remain in the UK?

No

Have you ever been refused a visa for any country, (including the UK) or had your extension of leave
to remain to any country, (including the UK) refused?

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 No

Have you been deported, removed or otherwise required to leave any country, (including the UK) in the
last 10 years?

No

Do you have any criminal convictions (either spent or unspent) in the UK or in any other country?

No

Have you ever been arrested and charged with any offence in any country and are awaiting or
currently on trial?

No

4/5 - Terms & Conditions

The objective of Chevening is to support UK foreign policy priorities and create lasting positive
relationships with future leaders, influencers and decision makers.

All award recipients are required to confirm they will adhere to Chevening’s terms and
conditions.

During your award

I will attend mandatory Chevening events held during my award.

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 Yes

I will actively engage with the Chevening network in the UK.

Yes

I will remain in the UK during my award (except for authorised absences) and understand the
condition not to spend more than 30 days outside of the UK during this time.

Yes

I will respond to surveys sent by Chevening, to help evaluate the success of the programme and
inform ongoing programme development.

Yes

After your award

I understand that any request to remain in the UK will not be granted, including for the purposes of
further study or employment.

Yes

I will actively engage with the Chevening alumni community in my country and globally.

Yes

I will join Chevening Connect, the alumni portal.

Yes

I will respond to future surveys sent by Chevening, to help evaluate the success of the programme and
inform ongoing programme development.

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 Yes

5/5 - Upload documents and Submit

Before submitting your application, please take the time to complete the below sections which
will help improve aspects of the Chevening programme.

It is important to note that you can only submit one Chevening application each year, so please
think carefully before submitting. Once you have submitted your application by clicking the
'Submit to Chevening' button below, you will not be able to amend your application.

The information provided here will be used when assessing your application and, if you are
selected, when administering your award. Please read the award terms and conditions for
further information.

By choosing to submit this application, you are confirming that the information you have
provided is true and correct.

If you are granted an award, any information provided in your application that is found to be
false or misleading, may result in your award being withdrawn, and you may also be required to
pay back the award amount.

Failure to disclose information that has been requested, regardless of the time elapsed after
discovery, may also result in your award being withdrawn, and you may be required to pay
back the award amount.

By choosing to submit this application, you are consenting to the terms of the Privacy Notice
and agree to your information being held and used as described in this statement.

Equal Opportunities

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Do you have a disability?

No

Do you require specific arrangements in order to attend an interview?

No

Please state your gender

Man

Are you from an ethnic minority, tribe or indigenous community?

No

Where did you hear about Chevening

How did you hear about Chevening

Word of mouth

How long did you consider applying to Chevening in this application round before beginning this
application?

Less than 1

What were the major factors that led you to applying to Chevening?

Reputation of Chevening, Reputation of the UK, Publicity about the Chevening programme, Advice of a
Chevening alumnus/alumna, Time is right in my career

Have you applied to Chevening in previous years?

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 No

Have you considered applying for any other scholarship funding?

No

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English language qualification

Test Listening Reading Speaking Writing Overall Report #

No

Feedback

User friendliness of the online application system

Satisfied

Speed and capacity of the online application system

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 Satisfied

Clarity of the instructions provided by the online system to complete the application

Satisfied

Overall online application system

Satisfied

Additional Comments

Final Submission Statement

Yes

Your scholar biography

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Questions
Pre-screen
Do you aspire to be or are you already a leader, decision maker or opinion former in your home country?

Yes

Are you a British citizen?

No

Have you ever received a scholarship funded by the UK government?

No

Have you been employed in a permanent, temporary or internship role since July 2017 by the UK government
or the Association of Commonwealth Universities?

No

Have any of your immediate relatives been employed by the above organisations since July 2017?

No

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