“Don’t underestimate how empowering it is for young people to come into your creative work spaces and meet real people in real roles…."
Based in Swindon’s Heritage Action Zone, Create Studios is a hub for digital and cultural innovation in the heart of Swindon. They are a team of filmmakers, photographers and animators dedicated to producing impactful digital storytelling. As a Community Interest Company, they reinvest their profits into creating opportunities for the next generation of diverse talent in the creative industries through various mentoring initiatives.
Partnership Working
Create Studios wanted to represent the wider creative economy in the area and therefore collaborated with some external workshop facilitators based in the local creative industries and education sector. These included Boomsatsuma, a Bristol-based creative college specialising in film, games, media and photography; Jamie Coupe, music and podcast Producer; Evito Talent, social media and influencer marketing specialist. These offers were in addition to film making workshops run by the Create team themselves.
Overview
Create Studios ran a morning and afternoon session and each session included an introduction and overview to Create Studios/Discover, followed by participation in two hands-on workshops – either games, social media, filmmaking or ‘realising your potential’; a talk/discussion around creative processes and wellbeing.
Number of young people reached
130 young people from 5 different schools
Advice for similar companies/organisations
Don’t underestimate how empowering it is for young people to come into your creative work spaces and meet real people in real roles….so even if you can’t put on a multi-workshop event like we did at Create Studios, the value of hearing about your work and your career journey is important. If you are going to run multiple workshops, then have a robust choice/booking system in place as last minute changes with 130 young people can be tricky! It was a really enjoyable and rewarding experience to deliver the Discover! Event, and we have had good engagement with our other opportunities for young people as a result.
Can you tell us why you believe it’s important for industry to get directly involved in inspiring and informing young people about careers in the creative industries through projects like Discover?
Create Studios CEO, Shahina Johnson MBE said: "We have always been passionate at Create to support a diverse next generation into the digital Creative Industries. We were delighted to work with Discover Creative Careers to host an inspirational event at our new Studios in Swindon's Heritage Action Zone to give a hands on experience to young people and bust some myths about access to the Creative Industries."
