Tech skills for the creative sector seminar

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Date: 4th of December 2015

Venue: British Library

The Knowledge Quarter is delighted to partner with the London Stansted Cambridge Consortium (LSCC)  in tackling the need for tech skills within the creative sector.

Creativity is at the heart of much of the digital economy, not just via gaming, film and media but the design of a range of customer facing services. 74% UK adults access the internet everyday, 74% use it to buy goods on-line, up from 53% in 2008. As Thomas Heatherwick says creativity makes the ordinary extra ordinary.

With Cambridge to north and techcity to the south the London Stansted Cambridge Consortium (LSCC) region has one of the UK’s most important digital clusters, representing about 20% of this sector. In 2011, digital industries reported the worst labour shortages of any sector, with 1 in 20 vacancies unfilled; of these, 90% were not filled due to lack of appropriately skilled candidates rather than churn.

UK projections suggest the need for an additional 745,000 employees with digital skills between 2013- 2017.  Jobs within the creative industries increased by 5.5 per cent compared to the national 2.1 per cent rise in employment between 2013 and 2014.  Across the board Cambridge is reported at the hardest city to recruit, with 0.09 applications per job vacancies.

The growth of tech jobs in the LSCC is huge and this opportunity raises two principal issues:

  1. ensuring employers have access to the right skills and are in a position to invest in developing these skills
  2. ensuring the local communities are able to access these employment opportunities

A great deal of work has already ready happened around these two key areas and this will be an opportunity to discuss what has been successful.

Seminar Objectives

The objective of the seminar is to:

  • Promote cross-boundary collaboration in the corridor, between FE, HE, LEPs and others
  • Share and discuss good practice and future plans
  • Understand future funding – specifically around apprenticeships

This seminar will bring together:

  1. key training providers from the FE and HE sector who are already delivering innovation
  2. key funders, such as the LEPs and SFA, to discuss their approach and what they are looking for going forward
  3. key businesses, who are already working with training providers in the region, to discuss their experiences