Creative and Media

David Turner, Creative and Media Lead Practitioner
David Kay, Specialist Industry Engagement Consultant
Nigel Humberstone, Film Music Composer
Warren Fearn, 3D Animator and Designer

Narrator: Walsall Consortium have taken the approach of using their local Education Business Partnership, or EBP, to get their employer engagement process underway quickly and effectively.

David Turner: The EBP were known to be experts in this field with lots of links already there and of course working closely in collaboration with the practitioners, were able to address our needs more specifically with the creative and media industries. This allows the practitioners to concentrate on the teaching and the delivery in the classroom.

What we did was, we met with the EBP and talked to them about our needs, and they were more than happy to help and we actually agreed to allocate some of the setup fund for the new Diplomas that the government had allocated to us, to effectively employ someone from the EBP to work with us for a day a week, and that enables them to identify what gaps we have as a consortia, and helping us to meet the needs of our learners.

As head of school here at the college, it was important for me to take time out to ensure that this qualification has a focus and a direction. So we meet with the EBP and the practitioners at least once every month, to make sure that we are on target and things are planned well.

Narrator: Sheffield Consortium took a different approach to Walsall, they began their employer engagement strategy by holding an event for local employers. They worked with a broker organisation to do this. A key member of the team was David Kay.

David Kay: So in the June prior to the Diploma starting in September, we held an event for what we thought would be 40 employers but we had 80 people come along in the end. And I think the key for making it successful was choosing a place and a time that was very convenient to people, and also making it clear that they weren’t going to be put under pressure on a single line of having to commit to a particular thing, but that there was a range of options available to them, and that they could come and listen and consider that.

We also gave them a really easy get out, we said, 'Email us back from this email, one click and say send me no more spam, if you don’t want to hear from us again'. And I think that sort of forthright approach made sure that people realised that we were not trying to string them along.

Narrator: To help give an employer perspective, Nigel Humberstone, a film music composer who has previously worked with schools in the consortium, spoke at the event.

Nigel Humberstone: David Kay invited me to talk at the event, and to give a brief overview of my involvement and my background, in Sheffield as a musician for over 30 years. I’ve got a real passion for the subject, for music. And I wanted to put over to other employers, how relevant it is for students to relate to the subject matter they’re learning.

Warren Fearn: The way that it was organised, the Creative Diploma Event in Sheffield, it was great because it gave...it was held early evening, it was only for a few hours so it gave employers, companies, the opportunity to go over after work, spend a couple of hours networking, learning about the Creative Diploma, and finding out just generally more about it. I think events are always quite useful because if there are things you don’t understand, there are people there on hand that you can just go and talk to, and immediately get the correct information you need.

David Kay: Central organisations such as employer groupings are often a very fruitful source of making contact with industry and drawing people in. However we’re very aware that individual schools and colleges, and individual practitioners, have developed relationships with industry through innovative courses and through their own professional connections, over long periods of time. So it was very important for us to give those people a chance to bring their contacts into the Diploma grouping and introduce them to the consortium, and that was one of the focuses of the employer event that we held.

In Sheffield we are very fortunate in having a concentrated geographic area, the Cultural Industries Quarter, where a lot of companies and freelancers in the creative industries are located together. Therefore a centralised approach really does work very well for us. But we’re also minded that there are a lot of opportunities with individuals spread wider that we’ve got to be constantly looking out to find people outside the mainstream circle of the network, and we’re seeking all the time to try and expand that grouping.

END