Creative city challenge brings students and industry together for day of problem solving
A unique challenge that saw students from Edinburgh Napier work with various creative businesses across the city to solve challenges, complete briefs and design products has crowned its latest winner.
The University’s Creative City Challenge sees its School of Arts and Creative Industries, School of Computing and its Student Futures employment team partner with a range of Edinburgh-based design agencies, computing start-ups, creative hubs and more to set students a day of challenges to overcome.
The unique employability event sees third and fourth year, postgraduate and Masters students from Edinburgh Napier solve various clues and challenges at partner venues, while documenting the whole day on social media.
This year, the four teams visited a variety of businesses including agency 442 Design, CodeClan, Creative Edinburgh, BBC Scotland, advertising and media company Story where they were set a number of tasks designed to challenge their thinking, team work, planning and creative skills. The post-event networking event was hosted by design agency Whitespace.
Challenges set included designing an interactive area to help Arsenal Football Club promote its charity, The Arsenal Foundation, interviewing staff members at BBC Scotland, designing a new radio campaign to advertise Marks and Spencer’s pet insurance plan and more.
The winners are the team which performs best on the challenges and the team that produces the most creative blog page, with this year’s Team Blue Coo coming out top.
The team – consisting of Product Design students Erin Reid and Jamie Walker, Music student Brandon Walker and Digital Media and Interactive Design student Frida Linblad - impressed judges with their creative talent and each received a Galaxy Notebook as their prize.
The challenge’s aim is to play a part in preparing creative students from Edinburgh Napier for employment alongside strengthening the School’s ties with the city’s creative industries. It also aims to inspire the University’s creative students, giving them employability options and ideas for the future.
Claire Bee, employer engagement partner for Edinburgh Napier’s School of Arts and Creative Industries, said: “Seeing our students connect with industry through the Creative City Challenge is a real highlight for us. The event creates such an inspiring and informative experience for the students who participate. We really appreciate the time and effort that our host organisations dedicate to our students.”
The Creative City Challenge has been documented in its entirety by its competing teams, with photos, videos and blog posts online at www.creativecitychallenge.com