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Creative Industry careers in sight for young people in Northern Ireland

14/04/2004

"We are delighted to be supporting this project which will give a generation of young people the chance to develop careers in this important sector."

Dreamlab, the brainchild of digital media experts Dream Ireland, gives young people between the ages of 15 to 18, the opportunity to experience working in creative industries like computer games, design, architecture, arts, music and fashion, through production-based training programmes led by industry professionals.

A pilot scheme saw the opening of new career paths, as students learned valuable lessons from industry professionals and from their own exploration of creative computer software.

Industry standard software is used enabling both students and teachers to develop new ICT skills and to experience using the professional tools of the creative industries.

Research recently carried out recently by NESTA (1) underlines the importance of the creative industries to the UK, growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole. The sector has grown by an average of 8% between 1997 and 2001, which compares to an average of 2.6% for the whole economy during this time.

NESTA fully recognises the importance of creativity for the prosperity of Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole. Due to its relatively small size, Northern Ireland is able to address the promotion of creativity and has already made significant progress by acknowledging the important role of education in schools.

The Dreamlab learning model will enable schools to outsource teaching and learning to independent organisations in the future, thus disseminating their experience and skills to other educational establishments.

Sarah Macnee, Acting NESTA Learning Director, said:

"Despite a lack of understanding about the creative industries, our recent research proved that it's a high area of growth for the UK economy, contributing 7.9% to GDP and £11.4 billion to the UK economy. We are delighted to be supporting this project which will give a generation of young people the chance to develop careers in this important sector."

1 New Solutions to Old Problems: investing in the Creative Industries, NESTA, 2003. http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/pdf/creativeindustriesresearch.pdf

Dream Ireland has been working in the area of digital media development for over five years. It is represented on a range of industry and educational groups including the Education Technology Strategy Management Group, the Creativity Action group, the N.I. Digital Media Forum, the BFI Education Committee, Arts and Business N.I and New Deal for Musicians Management Group.

The creative industries are defined as those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. This includes advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer games, television and radio.

Research into the creative industries