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

‘Don’t get me started…..on Broken Communities.’

The Huddersfield Salon 24th February 2009

Listen to the summary of this event



... are our communities under threat? Is state intervention part of the problem? Do you think the state is interfering in our business too much? Or is it the responsibility of the state to intervene? ...

Dave Clements, author of ‘The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated’, argues that “We are constantly being told that communities are under threat, that we are losing a sense of community. In reality the notion of community in Britain is actually threatened by the very thing intended to protect it; relentless government and third party interventions bent on imposing their own forms of social cohesion on the population.”

Our second speaker; Bridget Crabtree, Community Manager for the Netherhall Learning Campus in Huddersfield, will be presenting her ideas about community and government intervention. With several years experience of working within communities in Kirklees, she is in the ideal position to tell us why state intervention may be needed.

The tenth in a series of successful topical debates held at The Media Centre in Huddersfield, the Salon aims to bring provocative ideas from engaging speakers to its audience to stimulate exciting debate.

With ‘change’ being the global word of the moment, both economically and environmentally, perhaps it’s a time for change in the way our communities work.

What do you think? Come along and join in the debate!

Starting at 6pm on Tuesday 24th February at Café Ollo in the Media Centre on Northumberland Street, the event normally finishes at 8:30pm.

There is a £2.50 entrance fee and refreshments are available.

Click here to add the event to your calendar