Last month, two of the Diva team attended this year's Werkhouse initiative.
Werkhouse is a weekend studio experience for young creatives. It’s designed as a deep dive into the creative and interpersonal skills you need to succeed in a design studio.
Representing Diva were Stuart O'Neill (Executive Creative Director) and Tom Price (Head of Creative Technology).
Tom was leading a team of 6 young people to answer a real life client brief from Penny Brohn UK, a charity dedicated to helping people live well with cancer. Stuart was on hand as a roaming creative director offering advice on creative direction across each of the 6 teams.
This year there were 40 graduates/students and over 20 design professionals, ranging from designers to strategists to copy writers. This split offered the participants an incredible opportunity to learn and gain insight from an incredibly diverse and experienced group of professionals.
The Saturday was spent receiving and digesting the brief, as well as an initial ideation session. Alongside the brief we spent part of the Saturday talking about the importance of health and wellbeing in the creative industry, sharing experiences and hearing from the participants about their hopes, fears and expectations coming into the industry.
The Sunday morning was spent like all mornings before a pitch. Changing ideas last minute, pulling together a presentation and panic writing copy. Fortunately, the presentations were all incredible, each team delivering something truly unique against the brief.
Reflecting on what a positive experience the whole event was, Stuart said:
“Werkhouse was such an amazing opportunity to get together with other local agencies and creative professionals to help and mentor students and graduates looking to get into our industry.
The weekend provided a genuine agency experience, with teams taking a brief, collaborating with others to generate ideas and present their solutions back to a real client and their peers.”
Tom also had this to say about his experiences over the weekend:
“I found the whole process so incredibly rewarding, not just for myself but for my team as well. Some of my team members were understandably nervous before presenting their ideas to a room of 60 people, but they did an outstanding job. After the presentation, they all spoke about the empowering effect of the weekend.
Not only is this weekend a fantastic initiative. I found the effort the organisers had gone to to curate a diverse, inclusive group of individuals, a really heart-warming thing to see. I left on the Sunday even more sure that the more diverse our industry is, the better.”
