Experience or Education?

Gordon Brown has announced 5,000 new apprenticeships in film, fashion, music and design, with the BBC, ITV, the Royal Shakespeare Company and other large companies by 2013.

The new apprenticeship strategy – Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy – will provide young people with five hours of "hands-on" learning per week at school.

The goal is to make sure that students leaving college are better prepared for the real world by having more work experience in addition to their qualifications.

Having work experience is extremely important in making sure you are more employable.

Bronwyn Cosgrave, journalist, author and broadcaster told us: “I recently hired someone who was well educated but had no direct experience related to the task I assigned. I thought the person would be smart enough to figure out how to get the job done. It ended up not working, and I felt very let down.”

Here at Westminster

For the majority of our Arts programmes at the University of Westminster, obtaining work experience in the industry is mandatory. However, there are students who are unable to secure a work placement or don’t need one to graduate.

Ms Cosgrave said: “Having a combination of both is important. Education brings perspective and often develops an analytical mind which is crucial in the field that I work – journalism and strategic consulting. Experience is invaluable. It enables you to learn from mistakes and not make them twice. It also facilitates familiarity - so you can get a job done on time instead of feeling your way around in the dark.”

Many students are worried that after graduation they may not find a job or that the years they invested in going to university might not help them obtain the position they had worked so hard to achieve.

According to Flaminia Giambalvo, a journalism student here at the University of Westminster: “Having a work experience would help get your foot in the door. I know after this course I will get a job, but I’m worried I might not get the job I actually want and having more work experience in my specialisation would definitely make me more confident and employable.”

By all accounts, what this University needs is more work experience that will help us evolve into more employable, better prepared young adults.

London’s position as a world centre for fashion is under threat

This is a recent article I had published on Westminster Online


Skillfast-UK, the Sector Skills Council for fashion and textiles is calling for MPs to back a new campaign, “No skills, no fashion,” to encourage fashion colleges and universities to put more focus on pattern-cutting, garment construction and other technical fashion skills.

About 3,000 students graduate from fashion courses each year in the UK and according to Skillfast-UK, top designers and brands say they are struggling to find quality employees because the candidates are lacking the skills and knowledge to turn their creative ideas into realistic designs.

Skillfast-UK’s director of marketing and communications, Louise Wood said: “It is not that the students are lacking in creativity, they are not being given the right technical skills to produce their ideas. The problem is that it is more expensive to have pattern cutting and sewing machines in the classroom versus just having a course on the creative side.”

Which is why the new campaign, “No skills, no fashion” is being launched. Skillfast-UK hopes that this will encourage policy makers and educationalists to address the skills crisis.

The campaign is hoping to tackle the fashion skills problem in a number of different ways. It has launched an online petition for fashion employers (www.skillfast-uk.org), a careers advice website for young people thinking of going into fashion (www.canucutit.co.uk), and a possible “couture academy” for London, to specialise in teaching of technical skills for fashion.

To mark the launch of the “No skills, no fashion” campaign, models wearing toiles (a fashion designer’s first technical “mock-up” of a garment) posed in protest on St Stephen’s Green, in front of the House of Commons.

The models were joined by couturier and London Fashion Week exhibitor Helen David, of English Eccentrics (one of the designers supporting the campaign) and Linda Florance, chief executive of Skillfast-UK.