The project offered school pupils rare access to some of the region’s most exciting, innovative, and fast growing businesses to highlight the breadth of exciting careers available in the region.
In 2017 Engine Shed set aside £15K of its surplus to work with partners on new projects for our Diverse Workforce for The Future programme.
To find these partners Engine Shed published a ‘call for project ideas’. We set out to find people that had an innovative approach on ‘How to inspire and prepare young people from diverse backgrounds, for the opportunities in the high-tech, low-carbon, entrepreneurial and digital creative sectors’.
We had interest from over 65 people and received 18 applications which we shortlisted to 8. These 8 projects were pitched an a event on October 10th 2017, held here at Engine Shed.
Boomsatsuma were one of the four winners who came together to deliver the ‘Super Project’. From March to July 2018, Boomsatsuma aimed to offer over 1000 secondary and primary school pupils rare access to some of the region’s most exciting, innovative, and fast growing businesses.
- The “Engine Shed on Tour” bus was revealed on 23 January 2018 and The Engine Shed Tour started that March
- The Tour planned to make 32 stops over 4 months, to inspire more than 1000 young people about the breadth of exciting careers available in the West of England Region
- The tour bus is fully fitted with computers and film making equipment for young people to use
- Young people will create and share sixteen ‘360’ degree films, that will offer viewers an insight into jobs in some of the region’s most exciting, innovative, and fast growing businesses
Boomsatsuma are tenants of Engine Shed and run their Media Production Diploma and VR, VFX and Gaming courses from here.
Selecting Schools
This was a pilot project and the schools were in North Somerset, Bristol, BANES and South Gloucestershire. Fitting with our ‘Diverse Workforce for the Future’ strategy, we prioritised visiting schools in areas of multiple deprivation. In Bristol, the schools were all part of Bristol City Council’s WORKS programme.
What happened on tour
The project offered secondary and primary school pupils rare access to some of the region’s most exciting, innovative, and fast growing
businesses to highlight the breadth of exciting careers available in the West of England Region.
The first part of the project was for secondary school pupils to work with boomsatsuma on the specially fitted ‘Engine Shed on Tour’ van (pictured) to create 10 360 degree films. Engine Shed identified the businesses and boomsatsuma liaised with the school contacts and arranged for the boomsatsuma staff to run each trip.
Once at the company, the pupils had a production meeting on the bus where they got to try out the 360 cameras for the first time, talk about their plan for the day and ascribe roles to the team members – interviewer, filming crew, sound etc. They were asked to give a youth perspective on the breadth of opportunities, and the skills needed to work at that company so had to develop their questions quickly before setting out to see what they had to offer.
The companies were asked to show off their workplaces and offer for interview staff in a variety of roles that would highlight the variety of opportunities available in workplace.
The tour bus was fully fitted with computers and film making equipment for the young people to use. boomsatsuma staffed the bus with a Technician and several of the students from its Media Production Diploma as it made its journey around the region, applying their expertise in delivering projects to inspire young people, offering them unique creative experience, and helping develop skills to apply in tech and digital careers. The pupils then edited the footage on the bus and sent it to Engine Shed by the end of the day to add to our YouTube channel. It was then sent to the companies to show them the pupils’ work and their experience of that company.
Taking the Tour to Primary Schools
After creating the 360 degree short films, the secondary school pupils took the films and their 360 degree production skills to their local feeder primary school. The tour worked with over 70 pupils from Years 5 and 6 to share the excitement. The two schools, Merchants Primary and Easton Primary, got to see the video that had been made by the older pupils, try out using the 360 cameras themselves and got to hear about what it was like going into to a workplace and making a film.
Timeline of the project
- The “Engine Shed on Tour” bus was revealed on 23 January.
- The Engine Shed Tour started on 10 April 2018 at its first trip where two videos were made by Digitech Studio School at Bristol & Bath Science Park and CFMS.
- 11 May 2018 – The bus visited City Academy where Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, visited to find out about Bristol WORKS and Engine Shed on Tour
- July 2018 – The bus makes its first visit to Merchants Primary School
- The Tour made 11 stops over 4 months, to inspire more than 150 young people.
- The 10 videos can seen here
- The videos were added to Career Pilot – one of the most highly used careers portals for schools in the West of England.
What happened?
The tour worked with 11 companies, 10 secondary schools – 54 pupils – and 2 primary schools – 70 pupils. The secondary school pupils made 10 films which we can show you and there were two from our primary school visits. You can view all videos here.
Background information
Engine Shed on Tour is a project by Boomsatsuma, which was selected as one of four winners at Engine Shed’s Ideas Pitching event in October 2017. Boomsatsuma will staff the bus as it makes its journey around the region, applying their expertise in delivering projects to inspire young people, offering them unique creative experience, and helping develop skills to apply in tech and digital careers.
Mark Curtis, Creative Director of Boomsatsuma said:
“We’re delighted to see our vision come to life. The Engine Shed on Tour brings Boomsatsuma’s creative, educational, and film production skills together to inspire young people across the region. The bus will be fitted with state of the art equipment to build awareness around careers in sectors that may not seem accessible to children from all backgrounds.”
A key part of Engine Shed’s vision is to increase long-term, inclusive, sustainable economic growth by working with teachers and young people to support a diverse workforce for the future, and open sectors to future employees from wide ranging socioeconomic backgrounds.
Engine Shed Director Nick Sturge said:
“At Engine Shed, we celebrate innovation, collaboration, and diversity – and there’s nowhere better for us to champion this than within schools. Young people are the future, and Engine Shed on Tour will drive the desire and opportunities for young people to develop their skills in high technology sectors, resulting in high level recruitment in these industries for the South West, which is one of our integral goals. Diverse teams – whether at board level or at product-development level inevitably lead to better results and we hope that this project not only increases the long-term pipeline of diverse talent abut also raises the encourages employers to embrace diversity. We are also thrilled to be working with our friends at boomsatsuma, who bring professionalism, energy and creativity to life in projects such as this.