Working with secondary school children to help all of them see digital as a career choice.

Impact measured against UN Sustainable Development Goals

04 quality education S 05 gender equality S 08 decent work and economic growth S
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Intention

BIMA is a community of practice for agencies of our type. They run networking events, skill shares and training to build the capabilities of our organisations.

A flagship programme each year is their BIMA Digital Day, where they ask people who work at agencies, to go into a secondary school and run a workshop for a day. The challenge is set and the idea is to inspire young people to explore a career in the digital or design industries.

Thank you so much for making the day so successful. The students got so much out of it thanks to your interest and support. I am just about to write to the parents of all students involved to tell them how engaged and focused they were and what brilliant work they came up with. I couldn’t have done it without you.

David Milliken, Creative Digital Media, Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy

Results

This year over 150 schools took part with 10,000 pupils working on a real brief set by the WWF. We supported the Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy in South East London to meet this brief, with our industry perspective working alongside their teachers’ point of view.

The day was a real success with four groups of 15- to 16-year-olds all presenting back a pitch to us about the idea they had developed. The winning group identified the need for a drink fountain locator to reduce plastic bottle waste.

We loved seeing the enthusiasm that the students brought to the challenge. Within a couple of hours they covered a huge amount of ground with some genuinely interesting ideas coming out of the process. In a digital agency, communication and the use of creative IT skills are absolutely core to our work. I’d encourage anyone interested in pursuing a career in this area to use opportunities like this, to get as much practice as possible in both.

James Gadsby Peet, Director of Digital & Strategy, William Jospeh

What’s next?

We want to find more opportunities to engage with local education to improve access to our industry. In particular we will be looking to promote digital as a career to those that would not normally consider it an accessible profession.

By creating an entry level internship programme we believe we can have the most impact in this area, at the crucial junior level.