Are we training enough creatives -- or too many?

Are we training enough creatives - or too many? Are degrees in the creative arts a passport to the future or just conning the kids?

Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw recently visited the Huddersfield Media Centre. He has said that: "Our cultural and creative industries have been a British success story in recent years. They have continued to grow strongly during the global downturn and will provide a lot of the future jobs and growth the country needs."

This optimism has driven a massive increase in the number of people being trained in creative subjects in British colleges and universities. But when they graduate are they what the industry wants… and can there ever be enough jobs to employ more than a fraction of them anyway?

Andrew Blake, Associate Head of the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London says the rhetoric around the creative industries, skills and education is getting way out of hand. He believes we are educating far too many people for jobs that will not exist and that the best many people can look forward to is a life of self-exploitation followed by abandonment of their vocation for a more sustainable career. Unless, that is, they are the scion of the comfortable classes who are prepared to subsidise their offspring indefinitely in unpaid internships for a callous and increasingly exclusive industry.

Opposing this viewpoint will be Emma Hunt, Dean of the School of Art and Design at the University of Huddersfield.

Huddersfield Salon, Tuesday 26 January 2010

Doors open 6.00

Debate starts 6.30

Café Ollo

The Media Centre

7 Northumberland Street

Huddersfield

HD1 1RL

£2.50 or donation