250 children, 2 days, 1 big idea

In February 2010 I had the amazing oppertunity to introduce 250 different children into the exciting world of multimedia, and gave them a glipse of what a career in interactivity really menas.

I helped run open day sessions for students from six city schools, and they got to experience the excitement of the media industry for 2 days during a trip to Twofour studios in Plymouth.

The students were from Mary Dean, Woodfield, Oakwood, Beechwood, Whitleigh and St Peter’s RC primary schools.

The open day was a collaboration with the Tamar Education Business Partnership, and it was designed to study the impact of early career-related learning in increasing young people’s aspirations.

Screaming for more

I had worked with the Tamar Eductaion Business Partnership before, on some sound reactive software for some of their students, so I was pleased to show them the latest updates to my software, called Visual Voice Pro.

The students were able to scream at the top of their lungs, to test out the pre-release Beta. They loved getting the chance to play with the latest software before it had been released.

I was also able to give them a “behind the scenes tour” into the makings of some of my most famous and well know projects, like the work at Cadbury World.

Raising the aspirations

Richard Wallis, director of strategy for Twofour Knowledge, said: “We want to help raise the children’s aspirations, and make them aware of future opportunities that they may otherwise never know about, and a lot of the qualities we as an employer are looking for are transferable skills – energy, initiative, creativity, conscientiousness and resourcefulness.

“As a media company that works across television, design and the web, as well as in education, we’re hoping to give them a taste of the range of career possibilities.”

Jo McCaren from the Tamar Education Business partnership said: “We know from consultations with young people and their parents and carers that there’s a strong interest in media-related careers.

“The Year 5 teachers from each of the six schools visited Twofour last year. They were very impressed by the company, and were keen for their pupils to visit this year and participate in a series of short, career-related – but fun – activity sessions, led by Twofour staff.”

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