creative economy

Free funding for new staff for your creative business

Future Jobs Fund

If you’re growing your business, or bouncing back after the recession, you could probably do with an extra pair of helping hands right now.

The Future Jobs Fund programme is great scheme to bring new talent into your organisation. It’s a government scheme to create 17,000 jobs for 18-24 years old which provides 100% funding for your business to recruit a young person for 6 months, working 25 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage. To recruit a full time person or to pay a higher salary, just pay your own top-up.

Who can benefit

Digital Consultant is working with Gecko Programmes to create jobs in the East Midlands, West Midlands and South West for creative, digital and cultural businesses. We will help you recruit if your business is in:

- Advertising
- Computer games
- Design
- Events
- Fashion design
- Product and furniture design
- Film and television
- Heritage
- Jewellery and antiques
- Marketing and promotion
- Music – promotions, studios and manufacture
- Performing and visual arts
- Radio
- Video production
- Web and software development

For us to help, you need to have a registered office in:

- East Midlands (see map)
- West Midlands (see map)
- South West – (ONLY the counties of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Bath and Bristol)

How we can help you recruit

Gecko will manage all of your recruitment working with the Job Centre and our existing database, or helping you to recruit from your own network. If you are not established as a business (e.g. a voluntary group), Gecko may also be able to employ someone on your behalf.

Future Jobs Fund is not an apprenticeship scheme – you have no obligation to offer training, but if you want to skill your new employee, Gecko Programmes can offer advice about accessing Train To Gain and other funding for skills.

We can help you hire someone for any kind of job, including graduate or specialist roles. We’ve recently helped to recruit roles for organisations including:

Birmingham Royal Ballet
New Vic Theatre
Aston FM

Start you recruitment

To find out more and get started with your recruitment contact:

Susi O’Neill, Digital Consultant tel: 07981 222799
Email: susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk

Digital Consultant links for April 15th through April 16th

These are my links for April 15th through April 16th:

Election 2010: what the manifestos promise for media and creatives – Here's one to interrogate your election door-steppers with: what the three main parties will do for the UK's creative industries. There's some reasonable differentiators, particularly in Lib Dem/ Conservative pledge to (perhaps) diminish or cut the Regional Development Agencies. Some hopes still on the horizon for a (too little too late) games industry tax break.
Is ‘free’ finally falling out of favor? – Sad news today that Ning, the social network tool that lets anyone set up a niche social network in a few minutes, is adopting a pay or leave model. It's sad: I'm sure a lot of the networks I'm in will go (even a small cost is not always easy to achieve) and the critical mass Ning had with setting up one account to access multiple online communities, particularly in the non-profit space, will whither away. But it's also more symptomatic that this 'poster child' for web 2.0 free communities cannot survive endless free lunches: with Meetup.com steeling a march on real world communities by charging annual fees, we may now start to see the gradual 'pay or die' monetisation of many online services.
5 Ways to Reduce Social Media Distractions and Be More Productive – Some help we all need right now! Productivity tools to avoid getting carried away with 'real time' data (from bank accounts to social networks) just because it's there.

Digital Consultant links for January 26th through January 27th

These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

Why the Idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality – Steve Jobs has layed down the competition with Amazon and the Kindle, and are developing an Apple i-flavoured tablet which, in typical Apple style (may) revolutionise and breath life into the publishing industry. However, the hefty price tag and service charge are a major barrier, and it's best to say 'wait and see' for now – but one to watch.
The Moment Social Media Became Serious Business – - Tammy Erickson writes a brilliant little piece on how technologies have changed the way communications and workflow exist throughout history – from the telephone and the fax through to social media today, allowing multiple, discerete pieces of asyoncronous and virtual one-to-one and one-to-many communications. It's becoming integral to how we work, and a core tool of serious business.
Accidental Leaders and Managers programmes by Hyper Island – Calling all Yorkshire creative/digital folk: This Thurs is deadine for first batch of the highly recommended Accidental Leaders & Managers course run by Inspiral (a company I did the inspiral.biz project and others with) and Sweden's Hyperisland – the fair-haired wunderkids who are cleaning up the creative training sector with their radical nordic approach. Recommended for business owners.

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for January 15th

These are my links for January 15th from 00:21 to 10:49:

Bespoke CMS – bad news for you, good news for your agency – A one-sided but strong argument as to why using an agency's own CMS system instead of commercial systems or open source options (like Wordpress, which this site is built on), to increase the potential to upgrade, get additional features, and not get locked-in. Makes sense to me, but I'd be interested to get the views of agencies who develop bespoke sites.
Jaron Lanier Is Rethinking the Open Nature of the Internet – Interesting NY Times article about Jaron Lanier, a digital thinker and musician, who believes the free-for-all download culture is killing both culture and creativity: “Creative people — the new peasants — come to resemble animals converging on shrinking oases of old media in a depleted desert.” A lot to question about here (e.g. referring to Google as a 'lock in' technology, I would seem them as a service provider) but shows that many of the earlier pioneers of the 'information-should-be-free' ideology of late '90s are now having second thoughts on the viability of maintaining a spirit of culture economy within it.
French 3 Strikes Group Unveils Copyright Infringing Logo – Most amusing, the French body to prevent copyright infringment online is being sued…for copyright infringement. That 1 of 3 strikes before they are offline. And shows it's incredibly difficult to keep within the complex rules of copyright – more so for an individuals.

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for November 23rd

These are my links for November 23rd from 19:10 to 20:14:

Entrepreneurs: Stop Innovating, Start Minnovating – Forget big scale change and disruptive innovation, start 'minnovating' small ordinary changes to make big business differences
North West: Europe’s Second Largest Media Hub – Obviously a wishful thinking rather than reality title (and with an odd soft porn-esque cover), this brochure gives an overview in case studies and numbers of the North West creative sector, with an emphasis on the investment and all those opportunities that the funders keenly hope will come out of MediaCity:UK.