Meet the next generation of creatives from New Blood Shift London
Shift prides itself on creating pathways into the creative industries for those outside of traditional academia
Last night, some of the UK’s leading creative practitioners gathered at D&AD in London to celebrate the graduates of New Blood Shift, a free night school for emerging creatives run by D&AD.
New Blood Shift is a platform for emerging talent outside of the traditional higher education system to learn from the industry’s best through a five month free programme of evening classes, workshops and real life briefs.
Over the last few months, the New Blood Shift class of 2019 worked on briefs for this year’s sponsors: PwC, giffgaff and Starbucks, in partnership with Iris. The final work was showcased in an exhibition at D&AD last night, and is available to view here.
Every creative business should engage with the Shift programme. They would be mad to ignore it. It is our future.
Kate Stanners, D&AD President
Last year, 74% of the ‘Shifters’ secured creative placements following graduation from the programme, including in companies such as AKQA, Iris, and Design Bridge. This compares to 41% of design graduates and just 24% of media graduates employed in their sectors after 6 months of graduating. (Source: Telegraph).
D&AD works with a number of leading global agencies and practitioners including Analog Folk, BBC Creative, BBH, Bracket, Bulletproof, Design Bridge, Forpeople, Futerra, Grand Matter, Harbour, Iris, Lucky Generals, Method, Mischief PR, PwC, Phantom, Publicis Sapient, Pretty Bird, Saatchi&Saatchi, Saboteur, The Elephant Room, and VCCP Kin, who in the past few months have dedicated time, passion and expertise to working with the next generation of creatives.
The most valuable part of Shift has been meeting people from different spectrums of the creative world. It's given me a real opportunity to build relationships and relativise different schools of thought in order to improve my own. This skill set and my unique experience will continually enable me to provoke, challenge and question, using words as my weapon.
Seun Areoye, New Blood Shifter 2019
Our Shifters are ready to knock on your door, all you have to do is answer. If you want to talk to us about offering a paid placement please email shift@dandad.org. We are currently open for applications for Shift New York, if you know someone who would be interested please direct them to this page. Applications close on March 6 2020.
