There was a great turnout for the L!STEN / DigiFest Digital Careers event on Tuesday 13th February. Altogether, 22 young people attended this event at The Space in the centre of Stockport.
With help from our L!STEN Youth Alliance Team, the first activity that the young people did was creating social media content by making stop-motion animations. They were given a brief to create an animation of something that represents what PIE is, how PIE helps young people, or what could Stockport do to help young people in the community.
We had the privilege of having college students from DISC (Digital Independent Specialist College) come along to the event with Nicola Wardle, who is a Photographer and Studio Manager at DISC. They took some amazing photos of the event and helped the young people develop their digital skills by creating stop-motion animations which they can now add to their CVs or personal statements.
After a break and a lot of pizza, Nick Entwistle, the Founder and Creative Director of Bank of Creativity did a presentation on what his company does. He explained how his company works with a multitude of big-name brands such as WWF, LADBible, and Pringles, helping them to create compelling content to engage their audiences and create interest in their product or services using film and social media.
He went on to talk about his global content community online called One Minute Briefs which has over 45,000 followers on Twitter. It is a space where brands and causes can be promoted on social media by challenging their creative community on Twitter to come up with an advertising idea in one minute. The young people were then given a One Minute Brief to create a poster to advertise Stockport. The young people had some amazing ideas, ranging from using famous Stockport landmarks in their posters to including Peaky Blinders as some of it was filmed in Stockport.
Then it was time for Digital Speed Networking. The young people had 5 minutes to meet each local expert from the digital sector, including
Nick Entwistle, Founder and Creative Director of Bank of Creativity,
Roshan Patel, a UX designer, Sykes Cottages,
Ric Harris, a Senior Program Manager/Azure Engineer from Microsoft,
Jed Shaw, a Talent Acquisition Partner from CDL Software,
Nicola Wardle a photographer and studio manager at DISC.
The young people got a chance to see the different careers in the digital sector, and what qualifications they may need for a career in the digital sector, and how these experts created a career in the digital sector. They were also able to find out if any of these companies have apprenticeship opportunities and the type of salaries that are available for the specific roles.
Altogether, it was a very interesting and successful event. Thank you to everyone who came and to the local experts in the digital sector 😊.