Opening Address

Whats Current in the Creative Industries?
Sarah Mair Gates - Creative and Cultural Skills
Creative Skillset Cymru
Intro By Stuart Cunningham

This years opening address was a lot better than last years and left me feeling positive and happy about the upcoming lectures. I loved Stuart Cunningham's entrance. I like that it showed and example of things that we can do in the industry. It also showed us we should sell ourselves, as well as being funny and uplifting.
It was nice to find out what the aims are of creative futures. It gave me a positive head to put on and made me realise things i needed to look out for during the week. The aims where to create an insight into the industry, help us to develop our personal work and gain employability advice. The last two aims were to help us to network and to fulfill out studies. I beleive that I already have good stamding in these areas but I aim to make the most of this week. I know how important networking can be, as the saying goes, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Sarah Mair Gates is the Wales manager of a part of the Sector Skills Council. This covers performing arts, visual arts, craft, design, public, live events, literature and so on. This talk was all about statistics more than anything else. It opened my eyes to some of the things that can become something I could utilise. In Wales alone, there are 1,745 businesses with 27,990 people employed within the creative industries. 92% of these have less than 10 staff. I can understand this because of the collective. Although we have around 40 members now, there are around 7 of us that are constantly working. We have to be flexible to take on many roles. Sarah says that this is a useful skill to have when entering into a job within the sector. I was disheartened to hear that film and photography were not part of the largest number of businesses.
I've looked into the website that was mentioned (creative choices). There is a lot to look at. I will keep it in mind as there are opportunities for jobs and competitions. I also like the case study feature. I have bookmarked this site and will review it every now and again. Sarah showed us a video of Kursk, a submarine theatre show, made by graduates. I found it a little irrelevant but found some videos that were better on this site.
After the video, Sarah gave us some more details. She again told us how important it is to be flexible and how the Sector Skills Council can help with on the job training. This advice is great as it reminds me to keep my options open when looking for employment. My skills lie mostly in film editting, but this could lend itself to numerous jobs.


http://creative-blueprint.co.uk/

Creative choices are something that run workshops for school children at creative venues. 
http://www.creative-choices.co.uk/



Unfortunatly, the next speaker, Gwawr Hughes, of Creative Skillset Cymru, could not make it to the University due to illness. Luckily, Dr Stuart Cunningham stood in to deliver the talk as best he could. He started by explaining what CSC is about and their aims, using Gwawr's slideshow. CSC is more toward the technological side, which is more relevant for me. Their aim is to match training needs and deliver it to the employees of creative companies so that they comply with the benchmarks set by themselves of national occupational standards across Wales and the rest of the UK. Some statistics were then fed to us again. There are 31,490 people in the creative sector within Wales, most of them in fashion and textile or TV. The average income of people in Wales in this sector is £28,700 per year. This is not a lot of money so it just proves that the passion and drive is what you need to keep going. The salary is higher within England, due to London, Manchester and Birmingham. the workforce itself in Wales is made up by 68% degree holders, 30% of which have post graduate qualification. This made me think about doing a Masters in my course. Howver, Stuart went on to explain that we need to stand out from the crowd in order to get a job. I believe that all the work experience I have been doing will go someway to helping me with this. New graduates also offer the freshest cretivity and most up to dat skills, which can fill in the skills gaps that over half of the businesses have. This could be technical skills or simple things like communication and organisation skills. It's really daunting to think about things like this and if anything it gives me the push I need to hone my skills as much as I can and vary my specialised skills to include as many of the core technical skills needed. These days, to be successful in a creative media career, you need to be multi-skilled so you can carry out a number of jobs. This was the key message of the whole talk. Creative Skillset Cymru is there to help every step of the way. They can start at school level, then offer apprenticeships as the child progresses, offering on the job training. They also partner with FE and HE centres.This is something I need to look into as I am hoping to get a work placement this summer to set me up for my final year of the degree.

After telling us about Creative Skillset Cymru, Stuart gave us some tips of his own. This was mostly based on retaining the talent into Wales. We have to inspire the next generation to study creativley. Stuart told us about a recent Skills Audit in Wales that showed that there is a lack in transferrable and managerial skills.  He also told us about the increase in support across Wales, due to a massive push from the Governments realisation of the importance of the sector. It helps that our sector employs 1.5 million people and is worth £36 billion per year.