The Ideas Foundation

Last week I attended a very special event, one that was, for me, a window to the future of the creative industries in the UK.

The Ideas Foundation was set up to connect industry to education, and to spot and develop creativity in young people.

It facilitates effective work experience, internship and apprenticeship opportunities, and subsequently signposts further and higher education routes to creative employment and enterprise.

This event, hosted by BBH, tackled a prevalent issue; how to encourage diversity amongst the emerging generation of creative’s?

Before the room full of creative directors, managing directors and CEOs from many leading agencies debated this subject, we were privileged to witness several presentations by current students from the Ideas Foundation.

Whilst some students were understandably nervous, others exhibited a level of confidence and creativity at 16 that would equal creative’s many years their senior. We witnessed how these young, creative minds can be applied to a range of projects with surprising outcomes, including a new game for Nokia, currently on sale at their Ovi store.

So, how do we encourage this diversity? There are lots of ways; awareness in education, role models, funding, competitions and so on.

But one particularly interesting way is to form links between students and global brands, links that emulate a real agency/client relationship. Student evolves creative ideas for the sponsoring brand and, for a very reasonable fee; the brand gets some unique creativity from these uninhibited minds. It's a win/win situation, already proven in many cases to lead to commercial success, albeit via outcomes that are often very unexpected.

How else do we build diversity in the creative industries? Well, I had a thought. Awareness of the creative industries is certainly an issue amongst young people. Combine this with our confidence in the students to produce considered and effective creative work, and we have ourselves a project.

Being so talented, knowing their audience so well and needing something tangible to work on, why don't these budding creative’s help answer the diversity issue themselves, by entering a competition to design the 'Encourage diversity in the creative industries' ad campaign themselves, rather than the Ideas Foundation doing it for them. This campaign would be rolled out across schools and also in the industry to encourage diversity amongst young creative’s. It could be sponsored by a caring brand, and undoubtedly it will be a better-targeted campaign than most of us would create ourselves! Watch this space.