Intellectual Property Office Creative Careers event in South Wales
On 5 October 2022, some of the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) Creative team spent the day at a creative careers event hosted by Creative Pathways, in Cardiff. This was something new for us and a Corporate Social Responsibility opportunity with a fun angle.
What is Creative Pathways?
This is the seventh year the Creative Pathways careers event has been held, inviting year 10, 11 and 6th form pupils and further education college students attending from south central and southeast Wales.
The event is held to raise awareness of opportunities in the public sector. Interested employers don’t necessarily need to have vacancies to get involved, just be able to give an overview of their area and opportunities within it. There is clearly a lot of interest from young people, as over 1600 learners from 50 different schools and colleges attended last year’s event.
Most of the creative and print team were involved with helping to shape this project. From brainstorming ideas about what our pitch for teenagers would be, right up to designing relevant information to hand out to interested parties.
What we did
Eventually we decided we needed to bust some myths about working in the public sector and government and explain to the young people that it’s not all boring reports and forms. We took the time to describe what we do and how we try to make complex information understandable to the widest possible audiences. Also, how government design and communications has become much more digital.
We also wanted parents and guardians to feel included so we created a leaflet for attendees to take home to help explain how, with their help and encouragement, their children can potentially have an exciting career path in the creative industry. We highlighted this by listing how many different opportunities are available to them within that sector.
Thanks
It was a very productive and enjoyable day; the young people kept myself, Mauro Sassu and Claire Perkins from my team on our toes with plenty of questions and feedback and we’re looking forward to doing it all again next year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following members of the Gov Creative Design Team for all their hard work and support, in particular:
- Angelo Bellandi (Companies House, Cardiff)
- Lyn Davies (DVLA, Swansea), and
- Andrew Budd (ONS, Newport and Titchfield)
- Mauro Sassu (IPO)
- Claire Perkins (IPO)