Applications have opened for young people from Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest to take part in a brand new three month immersive training programme with some of London’s leading creative digital agencies. The programme, called Flipside, will enable businesses to access the wide pool of creative talents available in east London. Flipside will give the area’s young people an overview of what digital product design is all about through a combination of hands-on industry experience and classroom learning. 

Successful applicants will be trained by digital agencies and will ‘learn by doing.’ They will take part in group projects, getting to grips with product design by responding to real briefs, enabling them to build up their portfolio and showcase their work at the end of the programme to an audience from industry. Participants will also be allocated an industry mentor to support their development and help them to achieve career goals.
 
Flipside is a collaboration with ustwo, Made by Many, Beyond, Sennep and other industry professionals. Together with support from Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, the agencies have developed exciting content for the training programme and will provide a number of work placements for young people at the end of the training. Local organisation, A New Direction, will play a key role in ensuring that local and diverse young Londoners are recruited and supported into paid roles. The London Legacy Development Corporation is supporting the collaboration to align to the Mayor of London’s Digital Talent Programme and develop a pipeline of diverse talent into jobs at Here East, the former Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre now housing an exciting mix of innovators and digital makers.
 
David Goldstone, Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation, said: “East London is a hotbed of talent and we’re delighted to work with these cutting-edge digital agencies to offer young east Londoners this exciting opportunity to develop much-needed skills. There are thousands of jobs in tech, science and media coming to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the surrounding area in the next few years and we want to make sure that local young people have the skills and experience to take advantage of these fantastic opportunities.”
 
Jess Tyrrell, Client Partner, ustwo said: “We led the charge for London's leading product design agencies to come together to co-create Flipside to address a skills gap in our industry and find talented diverse young people who would be brilliant additions to our business.”
 
Hege Aaby, Founder and Creative Director of Sennep, said: “Not only is this a great opportunity for the young east Londoners, but also for our designers and developers to improve their teaching and mentoring skills.”
 
Charlie Lyons, General Manager at Beyond, said: "Everyone learns in different ways but the one constant is that people learn to change their personal conditions. We have designed the Flipside programme to help facilitate this change for several young people across East London. It is super exciting!"
 
Tom Harding, Head of Design and Charlotte Hillenbrand, Head of Learning and Development at Made by Many, said:   “University isn’t the only path to a design career and we’re keen as digital industry practitioners to offer alternative routes in. Made by Many is excited to take part in shaping the Flipside programme and give young East Londoners an unparalleled hands-on experience that’ll ready them for work placements.”
 
Sarah Vick, Digital agency and creative technology business advisor, said: “Flipside will give creative agencies access to a diverse, enthusiastic young talent pool. The people taking part in the training programme will be able to challenge our conventions and established ways of working. They will go on to help change and grow our businesses and the industry as a whole.” 

All Flipside participants will receive a training bursary. If you are a resident of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest and interested in applying, please visit https://www.createjobslondon.org/jobs/flipside . Applications must be received by 9am, 4 December 2017.