We were recently invited to take part in an Ideas Lab event, run by Brightspace here in Birmingham. The idea was to engage young people into thinking about careers within the creative industries. As the resident ‘events speaker’ at Supercool I went along to introduce young people to the concept of graphic design. Other creative industry representatives included Liz Leck [Birmingham Hippodrome], Matt Watkins [Beat 13] and Greg Rudevics [theatrical make-up artist] so there was quite a good spectrum of roles.

London Underground map of the Human Brain. A project I did at uni

Students were split into groups of 7-8 students who rotated around the room visiting different talks by each of us. We talked about our roles, education and career path. Each talk was a very brief 6-7mins, so I really had quite a honed elevator-type pitch by the time I got to the seventh group.

Students ranged from 14-16yrs and I was surprise how few had considered roles within the creative industries at all, let alone graphic design. The show was completely stolen by Greg whose talk involved a practical element, resulting in lots of students with theatrical glass wedged into the back of their hands.