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Door to SMEs opened for creative youngsters

A North East internship programme aims to unite the designers of the future with SMEs.

Taking the lead from similar projects in New York and London, ‘Shift’ intends to give creative youngsters an opportunity to gain work experience in an agency environment, while offering companies in the region the opportunity to capitalise on their skills.

The Shift academy will involve rolling internships and placements for at least 10 aspiring designers, programmers, writers and producers along with several mentors.

The programme will explore new working methods across branding, emerging technologies and multi-channel media.

A showcase later in the year will pull together these methods, and the findings of the scheme will be used to encourage improvements in education, inspiring entrepreneurship and creating jobs.

Studio Precept are the Ouseburn-based design agency behind the project, and design director, Nick Johnson, said: “The whole idea of the project is to give young people of all walks of life with a spark of creativity the opportunity to gain some hands-on real-life business experience.

“At the same time, we are able to offer our innovation lab to companies in the region at a fraction of the cost of normal creative agencies, which of course is essential in the current economic climate.

“We expect the programme will not only generate new ways of thinking but will also inspire other creative people in our region and help these interns gain employment with us and other businesses in the North-East.”

Over the next few months, the Precept team will be challenging traditional methods of creativity and encouraging cross-discipline collaboration.

Tickets are available for the showcase event here, and Shift will be taking applications for further placement opportunities and 6-12 month internships. Proceeds from the event will go towards funding the scheme.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .