Written by Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England, King's College London At any given year in the past, even with plenty of opportunities and degree shows, we would still be talking about the challenges that creative graduates face when entering the creative labour market. Over the last decade we have explored these challenges in numerous research papers, discussing both how creative graduates receive lower economic rewards from investing in a degree and the challenges of finding a creative job in a creative industry. Policy analysis has questioned their ‘value for money’, although recent debates hosted by the PEC have argued for the importance or considering other values and contributions that creative education makes both to the creative economy and society as a whole. ![]() However, it is important to acknowledge further challenges emerging due to Covid-19. The on-going global pandemic has had a devastating impact on the creative and cultural sector and specifically on creative and cultural work. Our recent paper (2020) discusses the way Covid-19 has exacerbated the existing conditions and made the precarity of creative workers more visible. However, within the rush of policy and support organisation towards mapping the impact of Covid-19 on creative work, we highlight the lack of demographic data. This can hide the different impacts across sub-categories, with potentially already under-represented groups being the ones affected the most. Across these under-representative groups, recent and soon to be graduates are likely to be some of the worse affected, not qualifying for government support schemes and finding more structural challenges in entering the sector. (A survey by Prospects on finalist’s experiences of the effects of COVID19 on their careers has revealed that out of the 1,202 final year university students who responded:
26% had lost their work placement/internship; 29% had lost their job; 28% had their job offer deferred or cancelled. In general, jobs are not likely to be available, with small creative business likely to be focusing on surviving and not thinking of hiring new staff. The Prospects report highlights that 80% of arts, entertainment and recreation businesses reported temporarily pausing trade compared to only 5% of IT businesses and 3% of professional or business service firms. As industries enter survival mode, the pipeline for creative talent is likely to be blocked off at the receiving end, increasing the already fierce competition for creative jobs; a backlog of qualified, experienced candidates is sure to form, leaving limited room of emerging and recent graduates. Opportunities may lie in championing the transferability of creative skills, and for more creative graduates to become “embedded” in non-creative industries, as outlined in the Creative Trident Model. The call for universities to ‘prepare’ their students and graduates has been getting progressively louder over the last decade. It is perhaps now more important than ever for them to have a realistic understanding of the sectors they seek to work in, and also be aware of opportunities that may lie beyond the creative industries. Nevertheless, being ‘work ready’ is arguably much more challenging to achieve when faced with sweeping uncertainty over the future of work. The structural integrity of the pipeline for creative graduates in part depends on the (financial) support measures developed for the creative industries, but also concerted effort from policy, industry and the HE sector to address the structural precarity of the sector that predates the crisis. We will discuss these challenges further this week (Wednesday 17th) during our Zoom Cafe (3-4pm UK time). If you would like to join, register via our get involved page.
0 Comments
written by Dr. Subir Dey, Assistant Professor at Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi A nationwide lockdown has been deployed in India across all the states . It’s a historical event leading to a massive crisis. Design education is one of the victims of this crisis. It is modelled on hands-on learning largely unlike STEM subjects that follow a lecture based model. It requires intensive studio discussions and practical sessions that impart specific skills to the students. The current system of design education in India is unfortunately not well prepared for the sudden crisis. The ongoing surveys on online teaching, online challenges , the confusion among students regarding learning and evaluation, the prospect of learning design in online mode are some of the common worries that are popping currently. And there is no satisfactory answer to that. ![]() I teach visual communication in one of the most prestigious ‘Institute of Eminence’ that is renowned for its scientific, engineering and technological contributions. Through my continuous conversation with colleagues from sciences and engineering it appears to me that the adaptability to online mode in Design education has to be far greater compared to courses that require lecture based teaching mostly. My teaching involves lots of spontaneous drawing on white board for explaining a concept. This practice includes cartoons, symbols, mind maps and other forms of signs. Sometimes it makes the students laugh other times it makes them think and question. This very act of sharing a common space with shared emotions will be highly challenged for Design education. In this context, these are some of the prominent themes of my contemplation: 1. Online design teaching Vs. Online tutorials: Youtube is filled with video tutorials in almost any Design subject. There are online platforms like Domestika, Skillshare etc that are offering lucrative courses for practitioners. The student has access to all these vast materials at their taps. Why will the student enroll in a design institute? Is it for the brand of the institute, a degree, certificate, placements or something more? Is specialisation a way forward for designers ? 2. Integrating online education with the classroom: No Technology can replace the effect of physical presence of student-teacher dynamics. Physicality is a quality that is essential for humans to believe and retain as truth. Without observing the body behaviours, the intonation, the glances, the hand movements, the laughs, the wonders, the arguments, the silence, how the learner is going to perceive the teaching to be true? And similarly, how will the educator be satisfied after delivering a concept? 3. Hands-on to Tap-on: Design education is largely a hands-on based model. Subjects like graphic design, printmaking, illustration, animation, photography, rapid prototyping, textile design etc require a huge degree of hands-on teaching-learning. That is part of the essence of these subjects. How does the essence of such subjects can be kept alive when the interface becomes tap-on? The communication is surely going to affect in the post-pandemic times. The students will have aspirations that are similar to pre-pandemic situations. However, the educator's aspirations will change surely with the changing methodology. On creativity in higher education there are good scholarly resources explaining different aspects that need to be addressed. Those should be looked upon by educators for creating a robust framework of education. But, for now, all eyes are stuck on the statistics of the affected people by the virus. Still counting and going up! This afternoon during our ZoomCafe (3-4pm) UK time we will discuss "Admission and Student recruitment: implications of Covid-19". If you want to get involve, please register here.
We will consider how marketing and recruitment policies have changed in the past few months and the general impact that has been experienced in relation to prospective students' numbers. We will share how different subjects are planning for multiple scenarios and numbers and how far HE can go to plan for the unknown. |
#CreativeHECovidIn this blog, we capture, with some short intervention, interviews and opinion pieces the perspective of Creative HE staff and students on the current Covid-19 crisis. If you want to keep update about new content, join our JISCMAIL mailing list! ArchivesCategories
All
|
*We define Creative HE (short version for creative subjects taught at HE level) all teaching connected with the following disciplinary fields: ARCHITECTURE (incl. landscape design); ADVERTISING (incl. public relations and publicity studies); CRAFTS (incl. ceramics, glass, metal, wood and fibre crafts); DESIGN (incl. graphic and multimedia design; visual communication; illustration; clothing/textile/fashion design; industrial/product design) ; FILM & TV (incl. film and media studies; television and radio studies; media/tv/radio and film production); CINEMATICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY (incl. directing, producing motion pictures; film & sound recording; visual and audio effects; cinematography; photography); FINE ARTS (incl. curatorial studies; museum studies; drawing; painting; sculpture; printmaking; fine art conservation); MUSIC (incl. musicianship/performance studies; history of music; musicology); TECHNOLOGY (incl. interactive and multi-media publishing; interactive and electronic design; animation techniques; software engineering; music recording); DRAMA (incl. acting; directing and producing for theatre; theatre studies; stage management; theatrical design and make-up; stage design); DANCE (incl. choreography; history of dance; types of dance) ; JOURNALISM (incl. factual reporting; mass communications and documentation); WRITING (incl. script writing; poetry and prose writing; imaginative writing) AND PUBLISHING (incl. electronic publishing and paper-based media studies). We also include courses in ARTS & CULTURAL MANAGEMENT and CREATIVE & CULTURAL INDUSTRIES.
The project is led by King's College London but benefits from support and collaborations with the H2020 funded European project DISCE (Developing inclusive and sustainable creative economies) for more information visit www.disce.eu
With the support of |
@2020 King's College London. All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to reference this website and its content please use the following academic citation format
Comunian Roberta, Dent Tamsyn and England Lauren (2020) Creative Higher Education and Covid-19. Available at: www.creativeHEcovid.org
If you would like to reference this website and its content please use the following academic citation format
Comunian Roberta, Dent Tamsyn and England Lauren (2020) Creative Higher Education and Covid-19. Available at: www.creativeHEcovid.org