Institutions must ‘modernise’ their creative skills teaching

Neville Brody raises important points about the way in which creative and advertising skills are taught in universities. At The New Technology Initiative in Birmingham City University, we realised there was a skills gap in the emerging worlds of digital, mobile and social media advertising. The Future Media Masters course was set up to deliver those skills in strategy, creative and implementation that are often lacking. Or, as we put it, ‘the course is creating the skills for the jobs that have yet to be invented’. The students establish themselves as a digital agency team, and all teaching is delivered by leading industry experts in fields such as branding, social media and mobile marketing. From the outset, the team immerse themselves in the new channels by using social media and smartphones as core tools of their learning. Rather than taking a theoretical approach, students work on live briefs from clients such as Aston Martin and Virgin Media. Just some of the work delivered includes setting up a live blogging business, discovering new interfaces through Makey Makey (an Arduino board) or augmented reality, and creating Flipboard-style content apps. Taking an advertising agency approach to learning presents challenges at times. Not least of these is the pressure to deliver multiple client-facing projects. However, through this hands-on experience our students build a portfolio of professional work, which demonstrates the creative skills that are often lacking in the advertising industry. Mark Brill, Senior Lecturer in Future Media at BCU (and mobile marketing and innovation consultant) futuremedia.me