Flipside is a D&AD Award finalist

24 September 2018

Flipside is an agency-led digital product design training programme aimed at helping young East Londoners to break into the digital industry and create digital products - and it has been chosen as a D&AD Impact Award finalist. Co-created by five agencies (Beyond, Made by Many, Reading Room, ustwo and Sennep), it is delivered by The Skills Lab in partnership with A New Direction’s Create Jobs team, and is sponsored by the London Legacy Development Corporation.

How does it work?

Over three months, a group of twelve young and diverse East Londoners (residing in Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets) are trained through a combination of active classroom learning and practical industry experience. They are paid for their time on the programme, during which they receive essential mentoring and support as they take their first steps into paid employment.

The training programme gives young people a broad view of digital project design, in a context where they can ‘learn by doing’. Combining hands-on industry experience with foundational classroom learning, the Flipside participants dive deep into the process of product development. They take the customer research, prototyping, teamwork and cross-disciplinary collaboration theory they learn on the course and go on to apply it to real projects.

Flipside has been designed by The Skills Lab in close collaboration with the five aforementioned agencies, in order to be a to be a fit-for-purpose curriculum that develops the competencies, skillsets and mindsets that creative and digital employers need to consider when taking on new hires.

The training is co-delivered collaboratively between the five agencies who focus on teaching the technical skills, along with the Skills Lab who focus on developing mindsets and soft-skills, and Create Jobs who focus on developing employability skills.

A bit about D&AD Impact:

D&AD Impact recognizes original and transformative ideas, that do well by doing good. There are twelve categories to be entered into, from financial engagement to ideas that improve living standards, helping the environment to championing diversity, and beyond. All categories accept beta projects as well as campaigns, initiatives and fully-fledged projects that are already out in the world making a real difference.

The result of a partnership between D&AD and Advertising Week, D&AD Impact is for everyone who believes in the power of creativity to change the world - be it a brand, NGO, start-up, entrepreneur, agency, social enterprise or aspiring innovator. Previous D&AD Impact finalists include Jamie Oliver, Getty Images, IDEO, Squarespace and Unilever.

“A life-changing experience”

Of our first twelve trainees selected to be Flipsiders, ten have gone on to full-time employment in the industry.

Oliver Benjamin, Director for Skills and Employment at A New Direction adds, “We want to launch digital careers by preparing participants with the mindsets and skills needed to excel at creative problem solving.”

The second round of Flipside launches in February 2019.

Get in touch:

We are currently seeking agencies who would like to help us grow the programme, as partners, employers, trainers and mentors.

If you’re an agency who’d like to get involved, contact Sumi Ejiri, Create Jobs Partnerships Manager sumi.ejiri@anewdirection.org.uk

And if you’re a young person who thinks this could be a great opportunity for you, contact createjobs@anewdirection.org.uk