A thousand apologies for the title, classic 90’s music puns have become a bit of a trend with our blog posts recently! Last week, I attended the ISE Student Development Conference & Awards 2018, an annual event which recognises and rewards organisations committed to training and developing student talent.
I was asked to attend the event by our partners at NTU, who had been nominated for an award because of their Innovation Community Lab (ICL) programme, which helps graduates who are relatively new to their roles understand and structure innovation, being amongst the very first cohort of ICL graduates, I went along as their living and breathing case study.
As one of the only creatives at an event full of learning and development professionals I’d like to offer you my perspective of the day…
We had been asked to present on the ICL programme, so we did a few quick run-throughs on the train. Our breakout session was one of the first, so after a warm welcome from ISE’s Chief Exec Stephen Isherwood and an opening keynote on Creative Leadership from Chris Baréz-Brown, we were up!
Emmie Studencki, NTU’s Business Services Consultant & Kylie Cook, Gradconsult’s Project Consultant, both run the ICL programme at Nottingham Trent. They did a fantastic job delivering their content on the day, and the room seemed to respond positively to my journey through ICL and how I drove that back into Affari. I floated around the room and listened to some of the ideas being exchanged and for a second I was back at ICL!
I then had the rest of the day to explore the event for myself, attending breakout sessions and engaging in thought provoking conversations with other guests. I attended a session on Emotional Intelligence which really resonated with me…
Dan Symonds from Interaction introduced the session with some profound questions about consciousness, which sparked some heated discussions amongst his audience. He then promptly handed the session over to a graduate, who like myself, was acting as a case study for the training programme that Interaction had created for construction and engineering company Costain.
I was fascinated with how forthcoming he was with his emotions and mindset at the time of joining Costain. He shared some personal feelings with the room regarding his emotional areas for improvement and how the course had helped him understand and respond to these emotions.
It reminded me of my first few steps in the creative industry, I would often question my value in the workplace. It’s only when I started to enrich my mind with other perspectives, and look at things through multiple lenses did I start to snap out of that mindset and to start trusting in my own capability.
So, my message to all creatives going through something similar is to consider changing your diet…no not burgers, I mean the media you’re consuming. Consider swapping out some of the junk food for lectures by thought leaders.
I then attended a session on female leaders in the business which was delivered by Lauren Albrecht, a management consultant from Zircon. There was some insightful and genuinely quite shocking statistics in her presentation, one in particular stood out to me…”There are fewer women leaders of FTSE 100 firms than there are male leaders named John”…crazy.
It really got me thinking about the lack of gender diversity in Motion Design, I follow a handful of female designers on Instagram but It’s rare we get female applicants for our Motion roles. Where are all the talented female Motion Designers, send us your CV’s!
Last but not least, I attended a talk by Managing Director of Gradconsult, Rebecca Fielding and Naomi Oosman-Watts the Assistant Director of Career Management at Newcastle University, on the rise of perfectionism in younger generations, something that rings true with me working in the creative sector!
I seldom read positive messaging regarding millennials in the media, It’s usually that we’re materialistic, impatient, have overly high expectations or are the product of a broken system of parenting…great!
Rebecca and Naomi’s perspective was refreshing, they explained how businesses can manage these behaviours to yield superstar graduates. For any graduates seeking employment or employers seeking graduates, I’d highly recommend checking out Rebeccas Ted Talk on managing expectations.
After Rebecca and Naomi’s talk it was finally time for the awards ceremony…alas the award went to the University of York.
As great as it would have been to win, the results of ICL are what’s really important. NTU and Gradconsult have inspired some real change in Nottingham’s local business community and should be proud of that fact!
I ended my day with a few drinks and some delicious food with the Gradconsult team before being peer pressured by Emmie into grabbing one last glass of champagne at the station before hopping on the train home.
So as you can see, an action packed day. From stimulating conversations regarding L&D to finally being diagnosed as a self orientated perfectionist! As a Motion Designer who’s usual day consists of storyboards and keyframing, I had a truly unique and spectacular experience!
