NWVM invests £300K in business support

Northwest Vision and Media (NWVM) invests almost £300,000 in business support for the region's creative and digital industries.

NWVM, who work on behalf of the digital and creative industries in the Northwest, have recently awarded £300,000 worth of tenders as part of its ongoing skills programme for the coming year.

The contracts are part of a £2.8 million digital and media skills programme being delivered by Northwest Vision and Media in partnership with Skillset and supported by Northwest Regional Development Agency.

The series of programmes and workshops are aimed at assisting businesses across the region and include; The Greenfield Northern Lights Programme, Accidental Leader, Accidental Manager and Technique.

The Greenfield Northern Lights Programme is a new entrant cross platform training and development workshop, developed by Andrew Thomas and Moira Kean - Vision and Media’s Media Development Professionals (MDP).

Sixteen new entrants to the sector will gain specialist training in one of four media disciplines, TV, Radio, Gaming and Digital Interactive. They will then apply these skills to one of four live industry multi-platform briefs. The best students will be offered the opportunity to continue their involvement through a placement in one of the four partner companies led by business professionals from across all sectors. Partners in this project include BBC (TV,) Made In Manchester (Radio,) Onteca (Games) and McCann Erickson (Interactive).

Swedish based educational company Hyper Island have been comissioned to deliver Vision and Media’s Accidental Leader course. Based in an old Swedish prison, they are renowned worldwide for the experience based learning they will be bringing to the Northwest. Hyper Island has put together a ten month programme aimed at teaching leadership skills to SME’s within the digital and creative industries. They have fourteen years experience in this field and each course is individually created around its participants and their needs.

The Accidental Managers programme will be run by newly formed Kirkbright, which specialises in providing management training for creative content SME’s. The programme will help those rising stars who find themselves managing people and heading up teams as their company grows. The project is being delivered in collaboration with Pannone LLP and Manchester Business School.

The White Room is a local company who have already successfully delivered Vision and Media’s DMeX programme. They have joined forces with 01 Zero 1 to run Technique, a high level digital employee training programme. This project will include high level technical training sessions, inspirational seminars and workshops and networking sessions aimed at senior developers and designers within digital companies.

Northwest Vision and Media’s Head of Skills, Lynn Kelly comments on the investment. “We are delighted to be able to offer a wide range of business and personal development programmes to each of our sectors. They have all been carefully developed to suit the digital and creative industries and enable us to further invest in our regions growing talent.”