T Level placements equipping students with more than just industry skills
A next-generation immersive design studio in Gateshead is one of the first businesses in the North East to provide industry placements for young people studying for the new T Level qualifications. Dan Baird, Director at INFINITY 27, explains how it’s not just digital industry skills that students can learn during their industry placement.
What does INFINITY 27 do, and what kinds of skills are young people learning with your business?
We create immersive experiences using tools like augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality, and we also make mixed reality, 2D and 3D games and real-time 3D graphics which are in high demand within industries such as film and TV. So young people who do a placement with us learn how to use these tools to create immersive experiences for a range of industries. They don’t just come here to make cups of tea and put data into spreadsheets – they get to work on real projects for real clients. They get to be creative, they get to have responsibilities. We want to turn them into professionals.
And what about non-industry specific skills?
They’ll experience how to manage a project, read a brief, chair a meeting. They also work direct with our clients and each cohort of students has a new brief which they work together to complete. They’ll feed back to the client, iterate and test their ideas - it’s a very active way of working. And for some students it’s the first time they’re talking with adults outside their family group and teachers so it’s a good learning experience for them.
What kinds of roles could people go into after completing a placement like this?
In INFINITY 27 we have varied roles like designer, artist, programmer and also jobs that are related to business functions like sales and marketing. We introduce students to all these roles and they get to shadow different members of the team. This means we can tailor their experience based on what interests them. So recently we’ve had a student with us who worked on marketing materials and audience research, while others worked on programming.
Wherever possible, we help people go into jobs at the end of their placement and we’ve already hired some of the students who have completed placements with us.
What do you think the benefits of T Levels are for young people?
As they have to complete an industry placement, they get to see how what they learn in the classroom is applied in a real project and, at the end of the day, that kind of experience is what I, as a business owner, am looking for in any student. So if you have a student who's been in a studio and done a project from start to finish then they will have the edge over other applicants. They are skills ready, they have the right attitude and the competencies and behaviours businesses need. It’s a route I would have picked myself if it was available when I was younger.
And for us as a business, it’s about inspiring people to consider these types of roles and bringing people into our industry. For INFINITY 27, working with T Level students has gone so well we’ve set up PROTOGÉ, a community interest company with the mission to inspire and improve individuals; to ultimately drive innovation into our industry through a focus on ensuring these high-paid, high-tech jobs are part of the local and UK economy.