Bettering the Creative Industries of Tomorrow

it’s great to be here it’s very unusual

setting for me i’m used to playing in

big venues like this in front of lots of

people but obviously the environment’s

fairly different i’m usually playing

very loud pretty uh hardcore music

to a pretty raucous crowd so if anyone

does just want to sort of start throwing

some chairs around or start a mosh pit

it would make me feel much more at home

and obviously

don’t really do that be completely

inappropriate probably quite dangerous

um

i uh i want to talk today a little bit

about

my journey to becoming a recording

artist

and an experience i had during that

journey that led me

into the world of education and to

become involved with a project that i’m

very passionate about

and i hope you’ll find it interesting

when i left

school i headed up to manchester to

start a degree

and i was set to study history of art

for three years

um but i knew pretty much from day one

the minute i stepped off that train i

was never gonna finish

that course and the reason for that was

because i had become

completely obsessed with everything to

do with music

up in manchester i met my

uh now business partner the chase of

chase and status

his name’s saul not chase i call him

soho and we we hit it off immediately

because

just like me saw was not interested

really in his degree

but he was obsessed with music and

everything about it

and it wasn’t long before predictably we

we bombed out of university in our first

year we failed miserably

and we had some very difficult phone

calls to individually make to our mums

who had

single-handedly slaved away for the last

20 years

to give us a very privileged very

expensive education

to get us to university in the first

place so it’s a difficult phone call to

make and i i remember where i was

vividly i

was up in student halls probably fairly

pale complexion

and uh i called up my mom and i said

yeah hey mom

i got some bad news

he’s not really going to work out for me

i’ve taken the decision to drop out but

don’t worry

i’ve got a plan and i proceeded to tell

her about

my plan to become a dj now

didn’t go down that well my mom didn’t

say much he did make a noise

that i’ll never forget it was a kind of

mix of a crying and a scream and a howl

if you can imagine that just all in one

um and i knew obviously she was

concerned well

me and saw we we stayed in manchester we

loved the city and

we just we got sort of jobs wherever we

could to make ends meet like any

struggling musician would

and in our spare time we tried to access

and get into the music industry this

industry we were

fascinated and loved and we would do

anything to do that we would

promote nights we’d hang out record

shops hang out around djs and clubs do

whatever it took

and and bit by bit we made some progress

up there and we made some music that

some people thought was

good and we had some small releases and

and we we started to climb up the ladder

of the music industry

this was what we looked like back then

you can see we took things very

seriously it was

hard man poses on um

around the same time i managed to land a

really great job

teaching in a in a large sixth form

college

in the in the heart of manchester uh and

i’ll go on to spend two years teaching

um 16 17 year olds music production

music technology

to young people from some of the

toughest backgrounds from some of the

toughest parts of the city

they came from very different

backgrounds to that of my own

and these two years were very inspiring

for me i

i was blown away by the talent that i

saw uh day in day out these young

people um and i got very excited about

their prospects

i was thinking wow these if these guys

are 16 already doing this level of work

and here’s me sort of 23 by now having

success

what’s going to happen to these young

people and i became very excited

at their prospects so

i did this for two years and then me and

saw we left we left manchester we moved

back to london to

pursue our own dreams and really try and

go for it

and by now we started to to our dreams

became a reality

we started to play shows like this and

we got paid to travel the world

and do what we loved doing and work with

amazing people

and i stayed in touch with most of my

students i was very eager to see

where were their journeys taking them

and the more i spoke with them the more

more disheartened i got because none of

them were realizing their potential

the same way i was and this really

bothered me

i’d seen how great these kids were and i

was doing well why weren’t they doing

well too

and it’s a it’s a it’s a complicated

question with probably a very

complicated answer but to try and answer

it

i thought back at my time with these

kids

at school from 16 to 19 critical time

for them

in in their lives and i thought about

the school that i taught at

and it was a great school great teachers

we were very passionate and cared

greatly for for the students there

but like all media courses and all art

courses and

music courses in state schools they’re

poorly

funded and they’re poorly resourced

which means

the computers were always breaking there

weren’t enough musical instruments the

studios weren’t fit for purpose

there was also very little development

of the personal skills these young

people would actually need when they

left school to get into

an industry like the music industry the

syllabus was a bit redundant

it didn’t feel like it kept up with the

changing nature of the music industry

projects felt dated um and there weren’t

really any

partnerships with any musical

organizations in manchester there’s

tons of great companies organizations in

manchester

and the school didn’t really have any

proper solid partnerships

so i spoke to my brother about this

um my brother was working in education

at the time for a great company called

teach first

and i said look i wanna i want to do

something to address this this has

really bothered me

um and we started hashing out ideas

uh how we could address this issue

around specifically around wasted talent

um and young people not coming from the

best backgrounds having the best starts

in life

why is their talent sometimes wasted so

we started hashing our ideas on the

literally the back of a napkin small

projects that we could do

that might change things and we spoke to

anyone that would listen to us sort of

drone on about this

these ideas and we got some great

feedback people seem really positive in

what we were talking about

and they gave us some more feedback and

and some more support and more ideas and

suddenly that napkin became

uh an a4 piece of paper and

we spoke to some more people suddenly

we’re speaking to leading teachers we’re

speaking to

executives from youtube from spotify

from universal we’re speaking to

mps we’re speaking to recording artists

all of them

saying the same thing giving us massive

confidence

that we would on to something they all

agreed with us that

the best people need to be able to

access the music industry

or the creative industries regardless of

their background

and this momentum over the course of 18

months

transformed uh the back of a napkin into

a 200 page application

to the department for education to open

a free school

in the heart of east london in 2014

east london arts and music was born

this is me and my brother this is a

breaking ground photo where

we’ve been procured a plot of land by

the government bought us plots of land

in east london

to build a school and a year and a half

later this this building was built

um elam

is a 16 to 19

state funded free school it’s free to

attend like any other state school

it specializes in music and everything

to do with music specializing games

design

and specializes in film and television

so a big facet of the creative

industries

when i talk about the creative

industries i’m talking about the

thousands of jobs that sit behind the

people you see on screens the people you

hear on the radio

the thousands of people involved with

the creative industries so people at

record labels producers technicians

live event managers um illustrators

the thousands and thousands of jobs

involved then elam

serves that those creative industries

it’s

it elam lives in tao hamlets the borough

of tower hamlets

which has the highest rate one of the

highest rates of child poverty

in the country which is significant for

us it’s also a very diverse borough

which is important

and it has a very rich musical and

artistic heritage

if you come to elam as a young person

you are learning

what it takes to get into the creative

industries you are learning

about the type of person you need to be

to thrive there

you’re learning about relevant skills

you will need to use there

what you’re not doing is you’re not just

there

to get a piece of paper or qualification

you are getting qualifications you’re

getting the highest ones you can get

eight land but you’re not just there for

that

i’ve seen it in in in practice the

creative industries they don’t actually

care too much about those qualifications

unlike law or medicine they don’t really

care

so much about those um

now the problem is the way schools are

set up

they find it hard to provide all of that

training to a young person

they shouldn’t be expected to elam can’t

do that on its own

they haven’t got the capacity they don’t

have the know-how schools are too busy

trying to deliver the curriculum and get

young people through those important

qualifications

they are trying to provide care for the

hundreds if not thousands of young

people that come through their doors

this is really difficult in itself

they’re doing this usually all state

schools are doing this on a very

tight budget so schools like elan

creative schools they need

industry experts they need partners

they need professionals to come in and

shape that experience for the young

person there

and that could be anything that could be

advising on how a building looks it

could be how a classroom interacts it

could be

how courses are designed and assessed

and delivered it could be

um the type of language used by people

in that in that building

this is one of our partners universal

music they do

a lot of this shaping they affect

a lot of the experience of young people

in many different ways and the effects

are profound for our young people

this is the interesting bit for me this

is the really exciting bit the

interaction

between the private sector the world of

work in this case

the creative industries and the world of

education in this case schools like elam

if you get it right amazing things

happen

everyone wins the work done in the

school

becomes massively relevant the outcomes

for trainees becomes tangible coursework

can even become

commercial and engagement from

everyone goes through the roof this is a

small example

uh one of many at the school this was in

our second year some trainees of ours

made a song

part of a songwriting unit they made a

great song and they used one of our

partners to set up a record label

and they figured out a marketing

strategy and a distribution strategy and

they figured out how to pitch to radio

just like a top record label would

because of this

the song got picked up by radio one uh

mr jam is a famous dj he started playing

it a lot

they got streamed on spotify and youtube

hundreds of thousands of times

now this piece of school work the

outcome for that piece of schoolwork

was that the trainees that made it they

got paid they got paid money for a piece

of work they’re doing at school

our partners got paid money of course

they got a distinction for the work i

don’t think they even knew by the end of

it they were doing

just some coursework for a qualification

that’s the exciting bit for me

that’s the market that should be the

measure

it should be the benchmark that we

aspired to what would what would the

best in the business

say about some coursework what would the

best in the business

say about this young person this trainee

if a young person leaves somewhere like

elam and they don’t want to go to

university

are they industry ready will they thrive

in the industry and if not why not

it’s it’s really complex actually doing

this

interacting partnering schools with the

private sector

getting companies to work alongside

schools in this in this way

at this level it’s really difficult to

do that because um

there’s massive safeguarding issues

companies are really nervous of working

with schools

which are full of young people under 18

that’s understandable there aren’t very

good systems and processes in place

to to help that transaction run smoothly

um at elan we do that by being

innovative the way we think about those

partnerships we do it by being really

flexible

we do it by being open-minded we do it

by being grateful for opportunities we

get and by always showing

that the opportunities our partners give

us are mutually beneficial

as our outcomes for our trainees gets

better

so do the outcomes for our partners

i’m proud to say elam’s doing doing well

it

received an outstanding rating in its

first ofsted

inspection we’ve helped uh we’ve

inspired and helped open

another school called the london screen

academy which is a fantastic film school

with some of the biggest backers from

the film industry and i hope that by

showing

um the benefit of the creative industry

coming together with creative schools

we can better the creative industries of

tomorrow

and most importantly the lives of many

young people thank you very much

you