How do you turn your creative talent into a viable career?

Bringing in big brands Shift provides students with direct experience with industry leaders and then pairs them with creative briefs.

Jo: There’s obviously lots of programs around now that do this which is amazing and I think what differentiates us from a few others is that we work in groups. We work in groups and everybody is very multidisciplinary – they probably already have an idea of what it is that they love, but we get everyone to try out different bits and pieces in the way that you would probably do at a foundation school – we just make it a lot more intensive. Having mentors along the way, we always bring in an executive creative director from the industry to come and lead the course.

Exercises like pitching push some people out of their comfort zones and get others into a new perspective of potential careers, but so much of the Shift experience comes down to testing the realities of the industry and practising a variety of skills in order to understand how soft skills can be applied and transferred to various roles that exist.

Jo: You do not get this in university or at least in very few universities. We do other things like a brief in a day which is an intensive one-day session where you get sent a challenge and you’ve got to fix it by the end of the day. With the Shift Berlin/Hamburg crew, we sent them to Adidas headquarters in Germany and they stayed at Adidas HQ over the weekend and they did an intensive day course with the team from Adidas which was again an amazing experience.

Edem Wornoo was a part of the first cohort of Shifters and spoke to the draw of the non-traditional school. Edem, how did you discover the Shift program and what drew you to take it on?

Edem: Discovering Shift, I was actually thinking about that now because it was so long ago. It was in the summer before I went to university and I remember one of my friends sending it to me. I applied and ended up going (I’m not sure if it’s still the case now, but it was not supposed to be for people that are in higher education, so I guess I got a bit of a loophole there). Throughout uni, I was always doing things that had nothing to do with my courses. I never went to lectures and it was kind of the same with Shift, so I would just leave Guildford where I was studying and come to London and be doing shift-y kinds of things which was delightful.

Celeste: What were you involved in before you started with Shift?

Edem: Before I was in Shift, I had this thing every single time that I had a job or work experience I would just fall asleep if I was too bored. I remember working at a law firm for my work experience and I remember falling asleep at the start of my day. I woke up when it was time to go home and I thought “No, I can’t live like this.” I was like, let me do something fun that I love doing. I loved stories but I hated reading so I just researched jobs you could do if you were in storytelling and discovered screenwriting. I got a book called “Screenplay” by Syd Field and I was like “This is the last book that I’m ever going to read.” To be honest, since then I haven’t read many books. I’ve read a very minimal amount of books in my lifetime, but I read that cover to cover. Then I just started writing screenplays that I thought were the best thing in the world – I thought that I was going to be a millionaire – which hasn’t happened yet, but I was like “These scripts are the best thing since sliced bread.” I’d take them in to teachers at school and give them to them not really for notes, more so to show them just how slick I was. Inevitably, they had lots of notes because the scripts were really really bad, but that was my in into the creative space, so I was just writing loads and loads and loads of scripts. One of the scripts that I wrote was actually what I ended up sending to D&AD as a part of my portfolio.

“I didn’t learn loads in university but I learned to hustle and I got quite far just from being able to say that I went to Saint Martins which I  find crazy. It’s not ok that there’s just a small group of people that can do that and now the university fees are colossal.” – Jo Jackson, D&AD CEO

Leila and Jo both came on to the industry’s scene at the same moment and found a shared motivation to expand and reshape spaces that were, and still are, “very middle-class, middle-aged, white male led – particularly at the top”. Though they come from different backgrounds, they found a mutual understanding of the industry’s shortcomings and a connection that allowed them to grow Shift to the program it is today. 

Jo: I had a very different career path from Leila’s. I was born in Central London and knew about Central Saint Martins because we used to go shopping around Covent Garden. I would be like “Who are these really cool people? What is this place? You can go to an art university?” I just wanted to be one of those people and that was kind of my golden key to get into the industry. It took me a while to realize that, of course, not everyone has that opportunity. I didn’t learn loads in university but I learned to hustle and I got quite far just from being able to say that I went to Saint Martins which I  find crazy. It’s not ok that there’s just a small group of people that can do that and now the university fees are colossal. You go through 3 years, you get a huge debt behind you and all that to not even really be equipped when you come out of it to get your first job. You can’t afford to do these low-paid work experiences and you also don’t necessarily know what the jobs are that you can get into. There are all these amazing small things like copywriters – no one ever says what a copywriter or a screenwriter could be. I think that’s kind of what I’m finding, and I do massively carry that from my own experience, but what we’re finding is whether you’ve been through a conventional further education/university or not there’s very little awareness of what opportunities are within the creative industry. That’s one of the things that I would really love to tackle more with Shift and Leila: an idea of all the creative roles that you could have. Then, right alongside them what pay grades would be – because if I’d had known that I could have been a UX digital designer and also being female and I could have earned 80k a year three years down the line, I probably would have done that rather than what I was doing before. There’s a crazy lack of awareness and lack of preparation for emerging creatives, whether you’ve gone through one university or another, and I think that Shift is one of the things changing that. I am so passionate about Shift with D&AD but there’s so much more that we need to do.

“If you have no access at all to what a copywriter is and what an art director is, but you’re a poet, how do you translate that into a viable career?” – Leila Fataar, founder and CEO of Platform 13

 

Leila: We do. I think that having not had that education I learned everything literally from the ground up. If you have no access at all to what a copywriter is and what an art director is, but you’re a poet, how do you translate that into a viable career? It’s us taking that talent and connecting the dots as well into what it could be, so we had no idea that these jobs were out there but you have raw talent: you have a graffiti writer, who could be doing something different, or you have someone that just takes the best videos on their phone and they could be doing big brand advertising. When I think about my own experience in creative design, I was headhunted by big brands for the work that I did. I probably wouldn’t have been able to get in if I had just applied because of my name, I don’t have the background, I don’t have the contacts – but there’s so much talent out there. That’s what makes me passionate. I’m from South Africa where there’s so much talent and no access, so for me, that’s a motivator and this is a perfect funnel to be able to go into the industry that we’re in with a brand and charity and company like D&AD that has so much influence to open those gates and shift those gatekeepers forward as well. Talent like Edem and other people as well, they’re out there. They just need one shot to be able to translate those skills and package themselves and that’s what D&AD does really well because it’s industry lead so they respond to those questions of lived experiences inside those businesses. When I went into big business I thought “Why is no one answering my emails?” And  a friend of mine was like “They speak in powerpoint” and I was like “What?” And they were like “They speak in decks” and that was a game changer. Suddenly, I understood a language which I had no idea about. That’s the kind of soft skills and hard skills that we want to make sure that not only they are getting into these places but that they thrive in these places as well. We know there’s an inclusion issue once they get in, so we want to make sure that we are supporting them and that the industry is thinking about how to welcome these people in and make sure they feel like they belong because, as Jo said, it’s just a different world.

“It’s not just about making sure that you’ve got a really diverse cohort of young talent coming through the doors. What are you going to do so they stay there, so they’re first in line for those promotions, so they don’t feel like they are marginalized when they walk through the door?” – Jo Jackson, D&AD CEO

Jo: And it does go both ways. It’s one thing doing programs which Edem has been a part of, but the job doesn’t stop with just giving a 5-month night course and saying “Here’s some contacts, see you later.” A lot of it is, as Leila touched on, the preparing and just shaping some of these agencies a bit and saying “Guys, come on you also need to learn soft skills yourselves.” It’s not just about making sure that you’ve got a really diverse cohort of young talent coming through the doors. What are you going to do so they stay there, so they’re first in line for those promotions, so they don’t feel like they are marginalized when they walk through the door? It’s still not equal at the top and we need to make sure that everyone has a voice. It is also a generational thing. Gen Z communicates so differently from Millennials to X-ers to Boomers. We all need to learn how to talk to each other because a lot of people have come into this industry through a screen, so we want to come out with more learnings on soft skills for HR talent – they put all of their top level guys through it but we’d also like to see their junior and mid-levels so that we are all talking on the same page.

“What is really amazing is that Shifters from the 1st cohort are employing the new Shifters coming out now and also end up being mentors.” – Jo Jackson, D&AD CEO

Celeste: It seems like a very holistic approach to the issue because you have the need to create impactful change and accessibility at the core of this project, but the solution isn’t just an onus for the artists that are trying to come into this industry and who then have to adapt, but also a discussion on the other side of what does the industry have to do to let that happen and allow people to thrive. This is so essential, especially when we look back at 2020 when there were a lot of “initiatives” for diversity that were really just these band-aid solutions.

Jo: Words written on a website with no action. There was a lot of that going on. We did a Shift cohort moment in New York City about two months ago, so we had the 20 graduates from that and we had all the major agencies coming to us or catching us afterwards just literally trying to hound us down to access this talent – which is amazing – but the answer back is “Yeah, only if you can show us that you’re ready and you can support everybody” because if it’s just going to fall through then it’s not going to do anybody any favours. There’s a lot of good progress, and there’s way more to do, but 74% of people that go through the Shift program get into the creative industry which is significantly more than those in further education (about 42%) that actually get successful employment. We know that we’ve got something really good here we know that it’s not 100% where we want it to be, but we’ve got a new unique place to work together and we’ve got Shifters like Edem as well who are at the top of their games now that we can luckily pull into conversations like this to say “this works.” What is really amazing is that Shifters from the 1st cohort are employing the new Shifters coming out now and also end up being mentors. We try to upkeep that Shift alumni network, which is one of the most valuable things about the program. We’re building an internal network where anyone who’s gone through the Shift program can easily reach out to someone within their speciality, or within their city, or within their year or however you want to do the filter, so they can then get access to that mentorship or the other way around to apply for jobs or post so that we can very quickly say “Yep, we know there’s a junior role coming up.”

One of our new shifters in NY just got a job. He’s a poet; he just got a job as a copywriter for Apple last week. It’s amazing he’s just graduated and now if he knows there are other new junior roles, he can get that straight onto the network. That’s where it gets really really awesome.

“It all works full circle because now I’ve made something with Shift that’s been able to bring people into the program and also show them that you can come from an alternative background and you can go to an alternative future.” – Edem Wornoo, film director and Shift alumnus

Edem: When I went into Shift, I thought I was going to end up in advertising and I kind of did in a way, but I was like after Shift I’m going to do the showcase, I’m going to have offers from all of these different ad agencies and I’m going to end up working in one of these as a creative – you can probably tell I’m pretty optimistic. None of that happened, I didn’t get a single job offer after, which might not be great for this [interview], but I actually learned for myself that I didn’t want to work in advertisement. It actually gave me the space to learn what I didn’t want to do but also what I did want to do. I made my first film with Shift because we were pushed to do new things. I remember we had this guy from Wieden + Kennedy and we thought all of our ideas are good, but he came through and was like “None of these are good” – I’m paraphrasing but that was the vibe and it pushed me to think outside the box a bit more so I made a film about my housemate’s best friend who actually went to CSM and he was a graffiti artist and he was a fugitive from Egypt and that was like the proudest thing I ever took away from Shift. I was able to make a film, something I’ve always wanted to do. It all works full circle because now I’ve made something with Shift that’s been able to bring people into the program and also show them that you can come from an alternative background and you can go to an alternative future. It’s really interesting to think about where Shift was then, what I wanted out of it and where Shift is now. I feel kind of nostalgic about where I was and what I wanted out of it then and where I’ve ended up.

Leila: Listen, Edem, I hear you. I had never even heard of communications. I didn’t even know what my skill was and I still don’t have a “skill.” My “skill” is the ability to understand what resonates in the world – that sounds really weird, and it’s not tangible and it isn’t anything, but I can make this thing interesting; that’s my skill. I’ve done that since I was a child, but it isn’t anything you can put on paper, so I like you, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I could do with that skill and that’s where I just naturally fell into what I do today because there’s just an internal thing that I can’t put a finger on and that’s what happened with you and that’s ok. Anything that’s going to open your mind and make sure that those skills, whatever they are, shift into career-making skills where you can make a living out of your passion, that’s ok. That’s a really big ticked box whether you get into an agency or not.

Jo: Yeah let’s not misunderstand that the school is not a finishing school to get people into ad agencies. I never wanted to be in an ad agency, and honestly, it’s the place for some people and for others not. Some people want to be in a smaller agency like Metallic or Platform 13 or those kinds of really cool agencies whereas I always personally saw myself and other people they’re freelance, they’re creatives, and that’s great. So, that 74% is that – it’s the definition of employment. In some countries, it means you’ve got a job and a paycheck but what we mean is you’re working in the creative industry – however you want to be working, you’re working. You’re making something happen and that’s what I call success because the industry needs people in freelance, they need independents, they need people running their own small business or working in them, but also, yeah ok, Asda and Tesco still need to sell milk and bread so some agencies will always have to do those jobs. Shift continues to grow and expand. Shifters have continued to graduate from the program and work in various capacities and in unique creative roles that many of us may never have imagined.

Edem: I was making films on Shift and I continued to make them throughout university. In my second year, I made a narrative short and I was able to screen that at the HQ in London. I’d also met a talent person that picked people up for Wieden + Kennedy at the time and she put me in touch with two of the Creatives there. I think that she probably knew that I wasn’t going to work in that space but she was weirdly kind of like a mentor for me after-the-fact (as well as well as my mentor that I was given during the course) and I actually ended up shooting some of my next short films in Wieden + Kennedy and then screening them there as well. That was something that was really important to me because I was able to bring people in. That was where people would have seen my shorts and then asked me to do music videos for them and commercials and so on and so forth which has brought me here. I think there’s definitely a lot of support after the fact. Which could look like anything because I’m sure for other people they had actual jobs in ad agencies and so even though I wasn’t necessarily in an agency I was still able to get support in different ways.

Celeste: Edem, what about your future plans, what can we look forward to?

Edem: I’m going to be working in a lot of weird artsy narrative spaces and I’m currently writing a television show with SKY to come out at some point in my lifetime which has been really fun and it’s definitely where I thought I would be when I was in school writing all of those scripts and bringing them to teachers – it’s just taken a bit longer than I thought it would. I love it, it feels like I don’t have a job which is why I don’t fall asleep anymore.