Media Skills Research - The Report
This is the report on a short piece of research conducted by Trilby Multimedia for Birmingham City Council during July 2000. It sought to establish a general picture of the skills that are expected in the Cultural Industries, how people gain those skills, and where, and the likely involvement that arts and media companies might be prepared to take up in prospective Youthstart pre-vocational training programmes.
SURVEY PROFILE
SKILLS
TRAINING AND QUALIFICATIONS
GENERAL QUESTIONS
SURVEY INFORMATION
Please note that this report is copyright. You are welcome to quote from it but you must contact us, we like to know how useful we are, and of course you must credit where it came from.
SURVEY PROFILE
1.0 Survey Profile A
The sort of companies that were questioned.
1 Arts Organisation, 1 Artist/Illustrator, 1 Design Consultants, 2 Exhibition service, 2 Film Studio & Production company, 1 Internet services, 2 Model Makers, 1 Multimedia & Electronic Book Publisher (New Media), 1 Musicians & Composers, 1 Photographers - Advertising & commercial, 1 Photographers -general, 1 Publisher, 1 TV Station, 1 Recording Studio, 2 TV and Radio Production service, 2 Video production companies.
ALSO Bectu trade union.
2.0 Survey Profile B
Specialist areas or audiences the companies provide for.
13 corporate 4 broadcast 4 education/training 2 entertainment
1 information services 2 crafts
3.0 Survey Profile C
Number of people working in these organisations
8 companies consist of 1-5 full time workers
4 companies consist of 6-10 full time workers
5 companies consist of 11-20 full time workers
1 company consist of 21-50 full time workers
1 company consists of over 50 full time workers
Number of companies who employ these numbers of freelancers
6 companies regularly employ 1-5 freelancers media workers
3 companies regularly employ 6-10
4 companies regularly employ 11-20
1 company regularly employs 21-50
1 company regularly employs more than 50 (Carlton TV employs around 60)
Part time workers did not figure in any of the companies except for the arts organisation which generally operated with 5 unpaid volunteers working on a part-time expenses paid basis.
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SKILLS
4.0
Do you employ people with ready made skills or do you train people in the work setting?
10 companies only employ trained workers
9 offer training at work
and 1 was a sole trader who didn’t contract in other workers.
5.0
What would you say are the key skills needed in your area of work?
Enthusiasm and Patience ranked highly but Clear Thinking and Analytical Skills were seen as important. Different specialisms required more specific abilities such as "3D vision, being able to think in the round" for a number of areas including multimedia as well as the obvious model making work. General Problem Solving skills were seen as a vital ingredient for most of the areas as well as the ability to Work on Own, Being Flexible, and Working to Tight Deadlines. Communication Skills for relating with clients and for working in a team were highly valued and this meant Being Confident and Selling Yourself. An ability to Relate to the Target Audience was seen as important but by far the biggest requirement was Practical Ability, knowing How to Do Things. Somewhat surprisingly only two people said Creativity and Imagination were key skills.
6.0
What skills are missing, or are in short supply?
Many of the respondents said they found that most of the above (key skills) were generally missing but more particularly Problem Solving and Practical Ability. New Technology skills were seen as missing in some of the sectors with reports of college graduates "knowing all about software Applications but not being able to apply them in the real world". In the film and Television sector there was seen to be a serious lack of Producers and Directors. At the other extreme the Web company we talked with had experienced no problems with recruiting workers with the required technical skills for their corporate web production work.
7.0
How do people develop these skills in general?
A great deal of reliance remained on colleges and universities providing the basic skills required for most of the businesses that make up the Cultural Industry. But there were some serious misgivings about how well these matched the industry’s requirements. The multimedia company, a long standing organisation with many ‘blue chip’ clients and 5 staff had never been involved in any sort of tutoring or mentoring role even though they expressed an interest in helping prospective workers in their sector. They have never been canvassed for their interest or for their views around skill requirements and wondered how the several ‘multimedia’ courses that are on offer could provide graduates with the skills they need to sell?
All the respondents said that ‘on the job’ training had to be provided to differing degrees and one said that "college graduates had to unlearn their college experience" before they could make a useful contribution. While all thought that formal training in a college setting was an important ingredient in skill development, an analysis of the respondents own training history shows that only 7 of the 20 respondents had received any formal training in the careers they do now. Of the 14 who are doing something other than they were trained for, 6 have degree level qualifications in other areas, 3 have undergone apprenticeship schemes at their place of work (or related workplaces) and 4 are completely self taught, usually cherry picking short professional training courses to improve their skills.
Perhaps this reflects the ‘Being Flexible’ key skill, in 5.0 above, and emphasises to the ‘Practical Ability’ that was seen as crucial by most of the respondents. One of the media workers who has developed his own expertise through sheer enthusiasm and experience explained how he had learnt his trade "by understanding how things work and by deconstruction - taking things apart to learn how they are made".
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TRAINING AND QUALIFICATIONS
8.0
Do existing training courses provide you with these skills (as 5.0 above) and skilled people?
There were five types of response to this question, broken down as ...
Yes they do 2
Yes with on-the-job training 3
OK for Basics 5
Not Practical enough 4
Not at all 6
There was a direct correlation at the extremes of these responses to the answers to question 10.0 below. The companies that were happy with the graduates from colleges were the companies whose workforce were 90% or more degree graduates while 3 of the ‘self taught’ workers were in the group who thought colleges did not provide people with the required skills. A university graduate, an art college graduate and an apprentice tradesperson also thought that colleges failed to deliver suitable courses. "I have two degrees but they don’t help me do my media job".
The median group, while being happy with college and university education and training, saw many limitations to formal education. "Qualifications are not the be all and end all by any means". And one respondent thought that "college graduates who succeed would have got through anyway", an opinion justified by our findings of unqualified, self taught media workers constituting 20% of our random survey.
Some of the workers we talked to claimed there were only a few courses available for their areas of work, sometimes only short modules within a longer training programme, because their work was so specialist. In these cases they relied on on-the-job training and building up their skills through a mixture of trial and error and persistent efforts.
9.0
What training have you had personally?
This is a record of the personal qualifications of the people who we interviewed so is not a direct measure but should be used as a rough guide to the mix and distribution of qualifications, or otherwise.
3 had Professional Qualifications from industry associations
6 had Degrees from Universities
1 had a Vocational Qualification
3 had undergone apprenticeships
4 were self taught and claimed no qualifications.
Some of the personal careers histories are interesting in what they demonstrate.
A photographer in our survey left school at 15 to do a graphic design job, training in the workplace. Later he went to college to study for a vocational qualification in Design and there he became interested, even passionate, about photography. That has guided his career since and he wishes he had been presented with more options when he was younger.
An older media worker, well past retirement age, went to an art ‘school’ as a teenager and from there to an apprenticeship to ‘learn a trade’, picking up from his ‘masters’ a wealth of practical skills and ways of doing things.
Many of our respondents have changed careers or direction and are not following the paths their educational history would suggest. A visual artist is now a TV producer, a dancer now makes multimedia and a history graduate runs a recording studio.
10.0
What is the average level of educational qualification in the company?
degree vocational certificate (NVQ) apprenticeship in-house trained
4 companies were 100% degree level
3 companies were 70-80% degree level and 20-30% with NVQs or in-house training
3 companies were 50-60% degree level and 40-50% NVQs,apprenticeships and in-house training
3 companies were 20-40% degree level and up to 60% in-house training
2 companies were 100% college vocational course trained with NVQs
2 companies were 100% apprenticeship trained with trade qualifications
3 companies described themselves as 100% in-house trained with no qualifications
11.0
What training courses have you sent staff on recently?
15 of the 20 respondents (75%) weren’t aware of any training on offer to any of the workers in their company or had not engaged in recent training themselves. It was only the bigger companies, who had their own training programmes, and those using new technology who were looking at training programmes in order to keep up to date and have a competitive edge. These have included "updating DTP skills", "learning about setting up websites" and getting to grips with "digital imaging". Companies who rely on freelance workers in a big way expect freelancers to be responsible for keeping their own skills up to date but only one company knew about any of the mechanisms such as Bectu’s Skillsbase careers and training guidance or MMTCs grant system for skill enhancement and career development. The arts organisation in our survey were the biggest user of short training courses, mainly to be able to respond to specialist audiences. Workers there have recently attended ‘Special Needs’ and ‘Challenging Behaviour’ training workshops and they are very aware of needing to develop digital media skills.
12.0
Has new technology affected your work and the skills you need?
not at all - some changes - big changes
2 companies said they were not at all affected
7 companies said there had been some changes to their work
11 companies said new technology had brought big changes to their work.
These answers relate directly to the type of activities each company undertakes. The craft based workers in Exhibition construction and Model Making felt no effects and those only slightly affected were operating in areas such as broadcasting, publishing traditional training materials and providing corporate media facilities where they were continuing to deliver a service relatively unchanged by technological developments. Everyone else was affected by new technology in increasing degrees from "many effects" to "massively". Comments include "it changes every hour" to "technology and what I do, go hand in hand". These companies acknowledged that these changes were bringing a host of new training needs, and the need soon for other approaches. "Digital technology requires new skills" said one worker and some companies are planning how they might meet the challenges. The recording company think a 50/50 mix of courses and on-the-job training will help them and one of the photography companies, currently the largest commercial photo facility in the region, know they have to "learn IT skills" in order to move with the times.
We deliberately placed this question at this point in the interview, to come after asking about skill requirements and patterns of training. When people had responded to this inquiry about new technology they mostly became much more concerned about training processes. We took this to indicate that not many companies plan for the future, being too concerned with the day-to-day operation of their companies.
13.0
If you were 16 what would you do to learn how to do the job you are currently doing/or want to do?
2 respondents thought that an ‘apprenticeship’ model was more suited for their areas of work (sound recording and exhibition work)
6 respondents thought that finding an appropriate course was the best route although some of these though that this was only the start but was a good way to get technical skills.
8 thought that getting experience was more useful than going for paper qualifications and suggested volunteering or finding part time work in media companies or related organisations.
Two workers wished that they had had a broader understanding of the opportunities when they were young and suggest that young people should explore all the possibilities for work in the arts and media industries.
Helpful tips included get a Portfolio of Work together, Network Yourself, develop Saleable Skills. And it was important to generally "do creative things - at school, with friends, at home. Look at films, play computer games, get a camcorder and make your own movies". An encouraging plea to test and try your creativity.
Some other comments in response to this question include "artists need to work outside of formal boundaries" and, more cynically, "go to college as a last resort".
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GENERAL QUESTIONS
14.0
We are planning to use community based Production Projects as the main way of giving young people an experience of working in the arts and media. We would appreciate your comments ...
not a good idea - ok - good idea - Do you have a suggestion?
18 respondents thought this was a ‘good idea’ with 2 thinking it was ‘OK’.
10 people had further suggestions including ..
It must be practical and have a clear output, a product.
It must try to do the (media) job properly, imitating real work processes.
Community ‘clients’ must be as real as possible, with definite needs clearly expressed.
Students must be given guidance and helped to analyse things - ‘looking,’ not just seeing - and understanding the processes involved in making media.
Some said that a mentoring process would be good, supporting our initial idea of ‘professional mentors’ to advise young people in specific fields of work that media workers are familiar with. The usefulness of placements was mentioned by 3 people but everyone acknowledged to limitation of setting up placements in an industry based on SMEs, freelance workers and total uncertainty of workload and availability.
15.0
Would you be interested in being involved in Youthstart in some capacity -
advisory, steering, placement, tutoring, visits, evaluative, other ...
10 people thought that their company could have some sort of involvement in Youthstart Plus although only 3 were prepared to offer this without hesitation.
7 people thought their company might have an involvement but felt unable to make any sort of commitment without referring to their Managing Director or senior worker. They gladly gave contact details and asked for more information. We agreed to sent a pack explaining possible contributions and inputs from industry if we were successful with the bid.
3 people felt that they could offer nothing to the programme because of their other commitments. They were however supportive of the idea and wished us well with the bid.
16.0
Do you know of any other research around these issues, recently or in the past? no yes - Please give details
Only 3 interviewees were aware of any other surveys into their training needs and the skills of the industry in general - two video production companies and a multimedia company. Only the larger company (Maverick), which already takes a pro-active role in training issues, was able to name the surveys and the organisations behind them. The multimedia company thought that Wolverhampton or Warwick universities were responsible for seeking their opinions around skill issues.
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SURVEY INFORMATION
17.0
Gender record of the interviewees.
Women 8, Men 12
18.0
Representatives from 20 companies were interviewed and we spoke to Bectu trade union for general information.
19.0
Computer platforms
No specific question was set in the questionnaire but where we had respondents who used computers in their business we inquired about which platforms they used. Overall the Apple Macintosh was the preferred platform but most also used ‘Wintel’ systems as well, usually for the business side of their operations. Some of the smaller companies with 1 -3 workers just used Macs. These were visual design and print related companies and demonstrated the continued dominance within the print industry of the Mac platform.
20.0
Methodology
We designed a list of questions around the areas we wanted information about and used this as a script for telephone interviews using a semi-guided interview technique around a set of open questions and a series of multiple choice questions.
We selected Birmingham based companies from the Thompsons Directory 1999-2000 by going through each of the categories and noting every category that related to the Cultural Industries. We added Arts Organisations, New Media and the Bectu trade union to our list of target interviewees. From each of the categories we selected 1-4 companies on a random basis and constructed a list of 40 target interviews. The 20 interviews we conducted were with those companies or workers who were available for interview when we rang during working hours between 4th and 6th July 2000.
We attempted to get a spread from the list of categories but failed to get any respondents from some sectors. These were Advertising Agencies, Advertising services, A/V production or presentation services, IT services, a Radio Station or Journalists. Some of these sectors were covered in other ways so for example the Design Consultants we talked to are an advertising agency production facility and the artist/illustrator does mainly Graphic design work.
We spoke to one large company, Carlton Television, to get a balance across the sector but most of the companies were SMEs with a good reflection of the industry as a whole.
Most of the interviews were 10 - 20 minutes in duration but some (4) were for up to 45 minutes where time was available and it was felt that useful information could be collected.
This is an imprecise and ‘quick and dirty’ mechanism but it has proved to be a useful means of pinpointing how the Cultural Industries operate from a training point of view and to get a measure of how they can interface with the prospective Youthstart Plus programme. The object was to create a snapshot of the arts and media sectors in order to highlight issues around key skills, training requirements and career routes and while there are many questions still unanswered we feel that this short exercise has served to illustrate the many problems and difficulties faced by the industry as well as identifying potential solutions. We hope this survey and report is useful in the setting up of youth training courses aimed at supporting young people in their creative aspirations.
Trilby Multimedia 6 July 2000
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