Chris Young Welcomed Aboard UWS Knowledge Transfer Partnership

After a demanding recruitment process, one of our most promising graduates from the Performance BA(Hons) programme at the UWS School of Creative And Cultural Industries started work this week on a brand new Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

Chris Young , pictured left in the Law At Work HQ,  is no stranger to those who saw his porfolio of films  at our Annual Showcase in April. As part of the Tenement Productions Team, Chris was winner of the Willie Strachan Gold Medal  for Creativity.

Chris is an accomplished performer, director  and editor, and I am confident that he can act as a creative dynamo in the 10 week process which will result in an innovative training video for our Partners, Law At Work. He has completed the first week of the research phase and over the next two weeks will meet clients,practitioners and other trainers to establish the theoretical underpinning of the bespoke training video around the subject of Sex Discrimination at Work. After that, Chris has seven weeks to  write the script, recruit the performers, and direct and edit the final video. The plan is for it to become the first in a series of videos around various aspects of employment law.
Chris is looking forward to the whole process, even although the fact that he became a dad two weeks ago means that his time will be equally divided between researching the script and battling the symptoms of colic!

At the Law at Work HQ today he said “It feels like this project is exactly the sort of thing I have been trained for at the UWS. I spent two years with my fellow students preparing for this and I am really looking forward to directing   my first professional training film”

It is especially exciting for myself as an an academic,   as  this is the first ever KTP for the School of Creative & Cultural Industries. For background on this see my earlier blog. It will not only provide a great opportunity for  Chris , but it will act as an innovative testing ground for the development  of our relations with industry. Creative Industries KTPs are rare beasts indeed, and  we at the School Of Creative and Cultural Industries  aim for this to be the start of an ongoing process of engagement with business. At the very core of what we aim to do at UWS is to create Graduates who are fit for purpose with the transferable skills suited to  the needs of a  rapidly changing outside world .

Steve Briggs, Operations Director with Law At Work said: “We’re delighted  to be linking up with  the  UWS to produce what I’m certain will be a high-quality training video, with a “made in Scotland” feel to it. We seized the opportunity to work with a team that includes a high calibre  graduate, and accomplished actor and writer Stuart Hepburn. This was only possible financially because of the KTP funding structure, and we anticipate long-term benefits from the partnership”

No pressure there, then! I should add that my  colleague Helen Kennedy at the Innovation and Research Office at UWS  and I  have received excellent support and advice from Alasdair Cameron at the West Of Scotland KTP Centre . It’s been a real team effort, due in no small part to their  unstinting support  and I am grateful to them all.

It’s early days in the production process, and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We have to come up with a first class piece of work for Steve and the team at Law At Work, but if the way things have gone so far has been anything to go by, I am confident we can repay their commitment.

I’ll report further on the process as it develops over the next 10 weeks.

Anyone wanting more information regarding knowledge transfer opportunities should visit http://www.uws.ac.uk/iro