Clemenger BBDO Sydney and I-Manifest Launch Creative Apprenticeship Program
This week Clemenger BBDO Sydney and I-Manifest
announced a new Creative Apprenticeship Program - The Forge - designed
to provide a foot in the door for young creative talent who may not have
attended university or completed AWARD school.
The program was
announced at an I-Manifest event on Wednesday night. The program is open
to I-Manifest alumni, with interviews taking place over October and
November - the first team will start work at Clems in early January.
Says
Paul Nagy, executive creative director, Clemenger BBDO Sydney: "We've
worked with I-Manifest before, and are huge fans of the work that Jo and
her team do. I've always been very passionate about teaching and
supporting creative people trying to take their first steps in
advertising, and this gives them another way to gain that all-important
toe-hold in the industry. Very excited to get the first teams into the
creative department and hopefully fire up their imaginations."
Says Emily Perrett, managing director, Clemenger BBDO Sydney: "There's a lot of chat about diversity in our industry at the moment, and it is time that we look at more than gender. This I-Manifest partnership is one of the things we're doing to build a genuinely diverse team - and that's about gender, ethnicity, age, educational background, religion, political and sexual orientation. We know that diverse teams equal better work, so we're investing early."
I-Manifest is an NGO that provides a new template for creative education. The organisation, established in 2012, uses creativity to empower youth to find their passion and live their purpose and provides career pathways for them into the creative industries. The focus is on culturally diverse youth and via the Micro-School delivery model, provides them with future ready skills, as identified by the World Economic Forum, so often underserviced in our current education system.
Says Jo Pretyman, from I-Manifest: "This opportunity with Clemenger BBDO is such an exciting next step for I-Manifest. It means we are now building genuine career pathways for our youth into the creative industries. We passionately believe work and education need to be a parallel, learning while doing, doing while learning. It makes sense and we see it as the only real way for the future given the pace of change in all industries. Clemenger BBDO was one of the founding partners of the charity and has always been at the forefront of change, piloting our new programs which have gone on to scale through other agencies. This partnership marks an exciting moment for us all to make real-world change through the voice of the advertising industry."
(Pictured: I-Manifest alumni Jumana at the launch event)
