Memorandum submitted by IPC Media

 

1. Background to the relationship between IPC Media and Creative Partnerships - vision, aims and objectives

 

1.1 IPC Media (hereafter IPC), the UK's largest consumer magazine publisher (owned by Time Warner), identified young people's education and understanding of design and media literacy as a core theme for its corporate responsibility programme in 2004.

 

1.2 IPC approached Creative Partnerships to access its knowledge of curriculum-based programmes supported by industry, and its well established contacts within appropriate schools, and sought its recommendations for an appropriate structure for the programme.

 

1.3 Working in collaboration with Creative Partnerships, IPC then created the IPC Schools' Design Programme, a specially-tailored course designed to introduce a group of young people aged 14-16 from the local community (Southwark) to the principles and practice of magazine design. The long-term aims of the programme are to:

· raise interest and understanding of the design industry among the local community;

· improve the creative design skills of local young people by introducing them to magazine design in order to help them access and understand the components of design as essential tools to developing their own creativity and media literacy; and

· enrich the talent pool from which potential future employees might be drawn.

 

1.4 The IPC Schools' Design Programme supports young people, teachers, school support staff and design professionals in working together to develop young people's interest and skills, which allow them to access work placements and enrich the curriculum offer for Art and Design and Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Media.

 

1.5 Creative Partnerships' aims for the programme include using the learnings to develop a model of working with a creative industry that can be disseminated to a wide audience, and providing development opportunities for teachers, allowing and encouraging them to work with creative professionals in delivering different aspects of the curriculum

 

 

2. Delivery of the Programme

 

2.1 The IPC Schools' Design Programme has been developed by IPC and Creative Partnerships with funding from Time Warner, Time Inc and Creative Partnerships. Early programme development has been carried out in partnership with Archbishop Ramsey Technical College in the London Borough of Southwark.

 

2.2 The programme began in 2005 and following an initial period of pilot working is now being further developed to ensure that it is able to be rolled out to a number of additional schools. The pilot involved two 10-week out-of-school-hours programmes which led to 27 students participating in work experience placements at IPC.

 

2.3 Creative Partnerships assessed the pilot scheme and made a number of recommendations to enhance the scheme, all of which Creative Partnerships has developed with the schools on IPC's behalf:

 

2.3.1 Hub and Spoke: To develop and formalise the programme outputs, Creative Partnerships created a 'hub' and 'spoke' system. The IPC Schools' Design Programme is now situated around a lead partnership between IPC and Archbishop Michael Ramsey Technical College (AMR TC) who together make up the 'programme hub'.

 

This means that, through their partnership working, IPC and AMR TC offer the programme to spoke schools that are able to engage with every element of the programme but are required to access certain elements of the programme at the hub school.

 

Each partner to the programme will sign up to a Partnership Agreement outlining the roles and responsibilities entailed in delivery of this programme. This will formalise the working relationship of each party and ensure proactive and measurable delivery.

 

The first spoke school, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic School in SE5 has joined the scheme in and in early 2007, 10 students from each school have been through the programme and recently completed their work experience week. A further school is due to join in the 2007-8 school year.

 

 

 

2.3.2 Buddy Scheme: To create an professional development and curriculum enrichment "buddy" scheme " whereby an art editor or senior designer from IPC develops a mentoring partnership with a teacher. Design professionals are now working with teachers of Art and Design and ICT/Media to devise and pilot new approaches to using magazine design as an opportunity to engage students within the curriculum. Areas for exploration include: visual literacy; creative thinking and problem solving; exploring and responding to a creative brief; application of design tools such as In-Design; developing knowledge and understanding of design practice within industry.

 

Pairings are asked to co-author and pilot single period activities that will be written up in an agreed common format so that they can be shared with others and form a core sustainable element of the programme for dissemination and potential best-practice guidelines.

 

2.3.3 Work Placement: To develop the work placement scheme is competitive due to a limited number of places available (4 groups per year, 10 students per group so 40 students per year based on two schools participating in the programme). So instead of a work placement being an automatic right of all those on the programme, Creative Partnerships developed an application process which includes an interview. The placement scheme is demanding and successful candidates are required to attend an after-school training programme that prepares students for the placement.

 

2.3.4 Develop New Outputs - magazine: As well as the work done in the school environment and during the work placement on magazines, the participants are now contributing to a magazine to be printed at the end of the academic year and distributed through participant schools and IPC. The magazine has multiple roles - it is a 'nice to keep' for those that have been involved in the programme, provides information for prospective participants and is a 'folio piece' for those whose work is published within it.

 

3. Impact and influence of Creative Partnerships

 

3.1 Creative Partnerships has supported IPC in a number of ways as described above and has been instrumental to the success of the scheme so far: It has:

 

· Introduced IPC to relevant schools

· Developed the pilot

· Managed continuous liaison with the schools

· Funded a project manager

· Devised new elements of the scheme

· Managed the budget

The input of Creative Partnerships has leveraged an activity that has met IPC's original objectives while enriching the experience of young people and their teachers. In particular, Creative Partnerships has influenced and enabled the way IPC works with young people, both in this programme and how we will work in future.

Creative Partnerships' direct work with the schools and the young people in the programme has helped those students - aged only 15 on average - to develop the skills that are required for the workplace. It is very important in a commercial environment that young people, as potential future employees, come equipped with a capacity for ideas, strong communication skills, be good team players, resilient and strongly motivated.

IPC has run work experience placements with its magazines for many years, unconnected to this programme. It had been our previous experience that many young people enter the workplace with qualifications valued in the educational sector but without the skills, behaviours and attitudes described above. As a result of this programme, we have noticed that young people who are encouraged to develop their creativity at school are more likely to possess the right attitude.

3.2 It is very important that the government takes responsibility for developing an education system that meets the needs of employers and our experience with Creative Partnerships leads us to support the continued funding of the organisation so that programmes such as IPC's Schools' Design Programme can be rolled-out.

July 2007