This team have been nominated by the University to apply for the Advance HE, Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) scheme in 2025. The team comprises:
- Professor Kirsten Cater, Project Lead
- Jo Gildersleve, Project Manager
- Katie Martin, Business Partnerships Lead
- Emma Guise, Marketing and Events Assistant
The aim of the MyWorld Skills and Training Team is to use academic and industry knowledge to create, through collaborative partnership, a diverse talent pool ahead of the market for the local creative tech sector.
Building on the creative production, technology and research strengths of the West of England region we deliver a wide range of training opportunities to instil the knowledge within learners to understand and embrace technical advances and build their confidence to turn their creative ideas into new careers, new client work, and cutting-edge innovations.
Studio Tour at Lux Aeterna – Career insights session (top) and the Skills and Training team with the MyWorld Scholars (bottom)
We consist of just four staff with a diverse range of backgrounds, and we all are only fractionally working on this project. We work collaboratively with a large extended group of collaborators, constantly adapting and bringing in the right partners for each training need.
Only through the critical mass, bringing together a mix of partners with the right expertise and working collaboratively, internally and externally, on this mission have we been able to deliver an integrated training offer and produce a diverse workforce ready to embrace and utilise cutting edge creative technologies.
ARRI Camera Course in collaboration with the British Film Institute (top) and Underwater Filming Course in collaboration with Esprit (bottom)
Our work responds to the urgent need to develop the talent pipeline, providing the skills needed by the growing local creative tech economy. We do this through developing a diverse educational offer to support pre-career, early-career, and mid-career, to enter the creative tech industry, take on new roles within the sector, and advance their specialist knowledge. We are particularly committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among the creative technologies industry workforce, with the aim that it is representative of all sections of society.
We have therefore designed, developed and delivered a huge range of educational activities to engage a wide range of audiences from different backgrounds and at different points in their career paths to meet their diverse needs. From credit bearing new degree programmes to short courses and workshops, equipping learners not only with cutting-edge technical and creative skills but also a range of transferable skills that employers value to equip them for this fast-changing labour market.
Since January 2022 the MyWorld Skills and Training team have delivered training to 1431 unique learners and 78 unique businesses, as well as engaged with 2054 members of the public to inspire them about creative technologies.
Unity Training course (top) and Animation Workshop in collaboration with Aardman (bottom)
We are currently in the depths of preparing to deliver two West of England Combined Authority (WECA) funded Skills Bootcamps in Virtual Production – one with Unreal and one with Sony VENICE 2 cameras – utilising the new VP stage, equipment and facilities at the Sheds in Temple Quarter. The University has never been funded by WECA before to run a Skills Bootcamp so we are hopefully carving the way for others to follow and piloting our professional educational offering ahead of CM1 opening in 2026.
We were very proud to be nominated and shortlisted this July for both the Community Award and the Awesome Human Award in the SPARKies, an annual awards ceremony celebrating the best of tech in the South West run by TechSpark. We are also thrilled to now be chosen as the University’s CATE nominee.
Kirsten previously led the multi-award-winning Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship team to success with a CATE award in 2019, so hopefully we are in especially good hands. But we know it is an incredibly competitive process, so we could still do with all the luck we can get – so do wish us luck!
MyWorld Skills and Training Team at the SPARKies Award Ceremony in July 2024
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