The Creative Careers festival is set to hold more fantastic events on the university’s Streatham campus in May.
Creative Careers: A Festival for Students
This month saw the launch of the University’s brand-new Creative Careers festival on its Penryn Campus. With three diverse events offering key insights into the competitive world of the creative industries the festival proved a great success.
On Tuesday Simon James, an award winning Children’s Author and Illustrator, delivered a fantastically intimate, interactive workshop. Throughout the session Simon softly narrated his celebrated books, interrupting the narrative here and there to offer insights into his creative process and how he begins to craft the structure of his stories. These asides provided the students with professional tips and inside knowledge about the skilled trade of storytelling. The session ended with advice about the business aspects of this creative career: interactions with editors, finances, approaching publishers and stories in translation. Within the small gathering of attendees Simon was able to personalise his session, focusing in on the elements and sectors students had a particular interest in.
Wednesday saw the Where to Take Your Writing panel discussion, hosted by renowned speakers from the literary world: Jane Darke, an award winning writer, curator and film maker; Michael Jecks, a celebrated historical novelist and Heather Norman- Soderlind, Chair of literature Works. The three speakers offered a varied and eclectic view on the many career paths available to lovers of the written word, encompassing publishing, marketing and curation, not simply writing. This inspired students about the multitude of opportunities out there for them.
The festival ended with a comprehensive workshop from the co-founder of Wolf Rock marketing agency, Phil Gendall. The session began with an overview of the marketing industry, its multifaceted nature and the multitude of roles it therefore holds. Student were then set to task on a fictional marketing brief, which began by first deciphering more about the brand and its values. Once this was exhausted the students were split into teams responsible for different aspects of the marketing campaign: social media, press releases, advertising campaigns and Website layout. Each team was offered invaluable advice from Phil who forced them to think about their decisions in a professional manner.
The Creative Careers festival is set to hold more fantastic events on the university’s Streatham campus throughout the first week of term three, 2nd – 5th May. With panel discussions about the current Visual Arts industry, workshops on Event Management and Commercial Theatre, and skills sessions addressing The Creative Job Hunt, to name but a few events, the festival promises a truly engaging and information rich week.
For the full listing of events search ‘Creative Carers’ on the events page of My Career Zone.
Date: 25 April 2017