25 Feb 2018

'Job creators for the future'

From Sunday Morning, 7:46 am on 25 February 2018

Te Auaha, the New Zealand Institute of Creativity will offer the world's first Bachelor of Creativity.

Director Victoria Spackman says the school will produce a new generation of entrepreneurs, job creators and skilled workers for New Zealand's creative industries which employ more than 40,000 people and add $3.8 billion to the economy.

The state-of-the art campus is a joint venture between tertiary institutions Whitireia and WelTec.

Located on the corner of Cuba and Dixon streets in Wellington, the six-storey facility can accommodate up to 1000 students studying a creative cross-disciplinary syllabus.

"The core skills we are teaching, such as creative problem solving, innovation, critical thinking, commercial and cultural awareness, and collaboration will be in high demand in all areas of the economy as we progress through this century.

"We've designed a facility to equip graduates with the skills to face challenges in jobs that even haven't been invented yet."

The campus has dance studios and performance spaces, digital recording studios, two in-house radio stations, an art gallery, film and photography studios, theatres, a cinema, a beauty spa, kilns, jewellery workshops, a 3D printing area, screen printing, stone carving and various art studios.

"The thing about a degree in creativity is it sets you up in lots of different ways. Some people go onto jobs, many people become job creators creating work for theatres, they go to work with Cirque du Soleil - they create their own work.

"We aren't necessarily creating job seekers, but job creators for the future and there's a lot of hard work involved in being creative."