This is the project report that, outlines two seperate but inter-related projects about enterprise skills and and networking skills. The project was run by the ICA and the design council. At the moment I'm spending a bit of time thinking about the future of our course, what has been working well, what could work better. The bridging between the campus and the workplace is one of those things that is always in the back of mind, and this report summaries two approaches to dealing with these problems. It's interesting the projects where not drive by .edu places but by industries organisations.
Platform was a basically a series of networking events that focussed around job hunting skills, this was cross sector eg not just graphic design students which meant there was chances for connections to be made between students. How could this work for us ? Locally I could see this working, but what I see the problem as being is getting the industry people along. I can see the students come together, eg students from textile design, and furniture design and graphic design and maybe even from the business areas.
The incubation project was a classic model of a business incubator. It was a series of 5 day workshops, with mentors working with the students to produce presentations on the last day. I think what really important was the fact that alot of the people involved understood the creative industries real well. They where not just business people but they where creative business people. Maybe it was a bit more live and interesting for the students because they had to do the presentations at the end as well and the fact they had to apply.
Reading the article really makes me think is we still have a long way to go to making our enterprise skills more successful. It was interesting reading the comments from students about the fact that during a normal course most art and design students don't think the business skills are relevant to them. I could see the mentors idea working extremely well in my local context with most of the staff being paid as casual staff, which mean most of the time they are running there own businesses. What I think we need is more of them, eg not just one business skills teacher maybe, well maybe one person to over see the process.
Posted by robin at March 31, 2005 02:19 PM