Creative Careers Festival 2022

The creative sector encompasses an enormous range of talent. The sector includes a variety of roles in areas such as TV & Film, Music & Radio, Heritage, Advertising and beyond, with different entry requirements and skill sets needed to succeed. 

There is a high level of interest in the creative sector at Oxford; and, for this reason, in Hilary term, we will be introducing you to it through a number of information sessions and useful workshops run by our expert careers advisers and a host of inspiring guest speakers.

Creative Careers Festival

Below is our list of online events for the Creative Careers Festival. All Oxford University students, researchers and alumni are invited to attend. Click on the event links to find out more about each one and to secure your place. 

About the sessions

Introduction to Creative Industries

The Creative Industries include a diverse range of industries such as Film & TV, Fashion and Textiles, Theatre, Museums & Heritage, Publishing, the Performing Arts, PR & Advertising and many more. The session will provide a brief introduction to the sector and tips on how to find out more about the industries you are interested in, find jobs, and networking opportunities.

The Future of the Creative Industries

Inspiring panellists will talk about their career paths, share careers tips, reflect on how their industries have coped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and discuss trends for the future of their sectors. 

• Margaret Burgin, Head of Careers at Screenskills
• Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, Oxford University English grad and banking and fintech reporter at the Financial Times
• Yasmin Jones-Henry, senior strategist at placemaking agency for the arts Futurecity, and the Editor in Chief at Work in Fashion
• Ilan Eshkeri, BAFTA award nominated composer, artist and songwriter. He has created music for the BBC nature docuseries A Perfect Planet, video games The Sims 4  and Ghost of Tsushima, films The White Crow, Still Alice, Stardust and Shaun The Sheep. He will appear with astronaut Tim Peake in concert Space Station Earth at the Royal Albert Hall in May. 

How to Find Creative Industry Internships

Join this session for a brief introduction to the types of placements that you could be undertaking in the creative sector, and how to source them. We will offer details on the Micro-Internship and Summer Internship Programmes.

Careers in TV, Film & Games

Join us for our exciting panel event about careers in TV, Film and Games. This is a unique opportunity to hear from professionals across a range of specialisms such as talent representation, acting, writing, producing and games development, talk about their careers and offer advice to students interested in joining these industries. There will also be the opportunity to ask questions. Our panellists include:

• Esme Ash, Assistant Producer, currently working on a Netflix documentary series. She started out on the BBC’s Production Trainee Scheme, spending a year with BBC Three, before moving on to the BBC News ‘Victoria Derbyshire Programme’. While there, she received training in TV journalism, working with high-profile contributors, securing interviews as well as researching and presenting two original investigative films. After a brief stint in Arts development, she left the BBC to focus on documentary programmes, and has since had extensive experience working in challenging environments, including an A&E major trauma unit, following the most serious and life-threatening cases, and a police major investigations team, shadowing drug warrants and raids. Dealing with complex and sensitive subjects, she has built relationships and access with vulnerable contributors, including children with special educational needs and survivors of sexual abuse. In her current role, she conducts rigorous, story-based investigative research, fact-checking and shaping the script, liaising with contributors and supporting an international filming schedule, all the while negotiating myriad covid restrictions. She’s worked on programmes such as Panorama, Savile: The People Who Knew, 999: Critical Condition, Police: Hour of Duty, Strangest Things and digital shorts for BBC Three.
• Janine Beach, Entertainment lawyer and media consultant based in New York and Toronto, and the principal of Phoenix Entertainment Advisors.  Phoenix represents and advises directors, writers, actors, producers and companies across the film, television and digital media industries. Janine has practiced entertainment law at firms and production companies in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, representing several Academy Award, BAFTA, Emmy and Tony award winners. She has also been a senior strategic advisor to the CEO at two multinational media companies. Janine has spoken on film production and talent representation at NYU Tisch, London Film School, Gotham Film and Media Center and Edinburgh Film Festival among others. She received her law degree and MBA from Columbia University, and a Bachelor’s degree from McGill University with joint honours in Economics and English. Janine is also a classically trained pianist and holds Associate Diplomas in piano performance and piano pedagogy from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
• Andrew Laithwaite, actor, writer and musician based in the UK. He trained at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), after completing his BA in History & Politics at University College, Oxford. He has performed across the UK and internationally, working across theatre, film and TV, including Gangs of London for HBO/Sky Atlantic, and Peaky Blinders for the BBC. He is currently writing a new play, which will be produced in the coming year.
• Chris Sayers, Visual Effects Artist from South-West Wales now working at Mediatonic London, the developers of the game Fall Guys. After initially studying English, Music, Psychology and Drama, going on to do a degree in Acting he then worked as a Games Industry Recruiter. In 2018 he re-skilled as a fully self-taught VFX Artist using online tutorials. He now mentors students, graduates and young people about Game development as a career and supporting them through discovering VFX as a subject.
• Shivani Rambaran, game designer at Kuato, a multi-award-winning developer and publisher of children’s learning apps with a love for storytelling and language development. She's also the Discord community manager for BAME in Games (BiG), a grassroots advocacy group promoting diverse talent within the games and broader entertainment industry, while also supporting the British Games Institute (BGI) on the upcoming Games Careers Week 2022 as a steering committee member. Her journey into the games industry has been anything but conventional, working in jewellery manufacturing, graphic designing, healthcare, marketing and website development prior to joining the industry as a VR junior designer in her previous role.

Insight into Publishing

*APPLY BY 28 JANUARY 2022

Join our publishing programme in Hilary and build commercial awareness and understanding of the various publishing roles and divisions; get experience of working in a group on a publishing problem; gain knowledge to craft a publishing CV; and an insight into what publishing recruiters look for in candidates at the application stages. The dates for the programme are: 3 February, 10 February and 17 February 2022, from 14:00-15:30. Find out more and apply

Creative Careers Beyond the Obvious

What should you do if you're trying to choose between a creative career or more 'sensible' options? Hear from our panel of creatives who have backgrounds in biological sciences, law and fine art, about how to keep creativity at the heart of your career, so that you don't have to choose.

• Alicia Hayden, wildlife photographer and artist from North Yorkshire. She is currently studying for a Masters in Wildlife Filmmaking at UWE, in partnership with the BBC. In 2020, Alicia self-published her first illustrated poetry book “Rain before Rainbows”, with the aim of increasing awareness of the natural world, and raising money for the wildlife hospital Tiggywinkles. In 2021, Alicia won the “Human Impact” category of David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation’s Wildlife Artist of the Year for her piece “When the Whale Sang”, and was awarded the inaugural Ingrid Beazley Award. She has been placed in numerous national and international competitions for her wildlife photography, and is currently working on a series of pieces – both written and artistic – about how different forms of pollution are affecting the natural world.
• Salome Coker, (The Creative Lawyer) is a freelance finance lawyer, artist and consultant, whose clients include: Barclays, Clifford Chance, Societe Generale and Linklaters. She balances her legal work with her ventures as a creative entrepreneur and a self-taught multimedia artist. Her multi-faceted practice comprises of screenprinting, painting and photography. Salome is passionate about helping people build diverse and fulfilling careers by developing their creative confidence. Salome Coker is also an elected council member of the Law Society of England and Wales representing the City of London, as well as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Law.
• Fiona Whitehouse, the Head of the Internship Office at the University of Oxford Careers Service, professional artist and technical art historian. While most of her focus away from the Careers Service is in her Oxford studio, she has more recently contributed to a book on some hauntingly beautiful contemporary illustrations of Dante’s Inferno published by the Bodleian. This year she will also be giving lectures both in Oxford and at the Venice Biennale on 15th Century painting techniques. Fiona studied Fine Art and Italian at the University of Exeter and painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. She went on to study a Masters at the University of Oxford and was awarded a PhD on 15th-century painting techniques from Birkbeck College, London.

Careers in Arts & Heritage

Join us at this exciting panel event we're co-hosting with the History Society about careers in Arts & Heritage. This is a great opportunity to hear our panellists talk about their careers to date, the variety of roles and opportunities available and offering tips and advice about getting into and working in the sector. There will also be the opportunity to ask questions. Panellists include (additional panellists TBC):

• Dr Priya Atwal, historian and author. Her research interests lie in the subjects of empire, monarchy and cultural politics, particularly across Britain and South Asia. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Oxford, where she now holds a post as a Community History Fellow. She has also taught History at Oxford and King’s College London. Her first book, “Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire” was published by Hurst in 2020. It uncovers the story of the powerful women and overlooked children who forged a dynasty to rival the Mughals and the British, in the competitive world of nineteenth-century Indian politics. Priya has acted as a historical consultant for numerous organisations, including Historic Royal Palaces and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She appears on screen for TV and radio programmes, talking about the history of monarchy and Britain’s imperial past. Priya made her presenting debut in January 2020, with her 5-part BBC Radio 4 series, “Lies My Teacher Told Me”. This series examined the politics surrounding the teaching of History in schools around the world. 
• Polly Martin, Head of Policy and Communications at The Heritage Alliance. Her role covers liaising with the membership to promote advocacy priorities and influence policy, as well as overseeing the delivery of the communications strategy. Polly Martin has had a varied career; originally studying History of Art and working at Christies’ with a view to being an auctioneer, she took a sideways step into politics in 2013, working for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. She has since combined her love of politics and passion for history into a successful career in the heritage sector, working for Historic Houses and The National Archives. Keen to add to her experience, she has also been a trustee for SEEd, a sustainability education charity, and is currently a trustee for Creativity Works, a charity based in the South West which uses the process of creating to help change people’s lives for the better.
• Sarah Griffin, Frances A. Yates Long-Term Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, where she works on late medieval culture, particularly that related to diagrams, technology, and time. After studying her BA in Art History at the University of Cambridge and MA at the Courtauld Institute, Sarah wrote a DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford on a set of large scale medieval diagrams. She has held research fellowships at the Huntington Library, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Her research is driven by close collaboration with museum and library collections, and she has worked in a curatorial capacity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Winchester College. Her exhibitions have covered a variety of topics, including the collection of Thomas Browne, the Moon, German woodcuts, early colour-printing, and science-teaching collections in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her work often incorporates digital methods of presentation and research; at the Oxford Internet Institute, she worked on ‘Cabinet’, an online platform pioneered by Oxford researchers to facilitate the use of objects and images in teaching. 
• Hawwa Alam, Communications & Marketing Officer for an NGO, as well as a Cultural Learning & Participation Officer (Apprentice) for Manchester Museum/the Our Shared Cultural Heritage project. In her spare time, she works as a freelance artist, photographer and poet, exploring themes on heritage, culture, and identity. She is founder of the creative platform hawwa, etc, leading to her recognition by Instagram as a ‘star user under the age of 25’, and also co-founder of the rice bowl collective, an online platform exploring education and identity through workshops and zines. Her work has been published in a variety of digital and print publications, including a self-published art book ‘RICE’. Clients of her creative work include Adobe, Oxfam and the Manchester International Festival.
• Dr Sadia Habib, set up and leads on a young people’s programme at Manchester Museum: Our Shared Cultural Heritage. She also works as a Social Sciences researcher in the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity at University of Manchester. Previously, Dr Habib taught English Literature and English Language at Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 in UK schools and colleges. She co-founded The Riz Test – a tool used by students, academics, audiences and the film and television industry - to improve representation of Muslims in film and on television. Dr Sadia holds a BA (Hons) in English, MA in Education, and a PhD in Education.

Creative Careers Employer-Led Workshop with OK Mentor and BBC Studios Creative Director, Daniella Dickinson 

Join OK Mentor and BBC Studios Creative Director, Daniella Dickinson, for an in depth workshop on how to break into the creative industries, with advice on how to put together your CV, personal branding, reaching out to those in creative roles and much more. 

Daniella will be joined by junior members of her team, Emily and Roshni, who will be able to provide their perspectives of breaking into the industry and their tips, tricks and advice for others hoping to do the same.

• Daniella Dickinson, an approachable and focused Creative Director with 20 years award winning, television experience in the UK, EMEA and the Asia Pacific region.  I manage a team of Creatives and Designers, motivating them to produce world class creative for our BBC entertainment channels across EMEA. My expertise lies in strategy, development and execution of broadcast brands and 360 promotional campaigns. I am passionate about creative strategy, potential in people and equality. I am a single mum to a spirited eight year old daughter and I would consider my personal strengths to be resilience, resourcefulness, empathetic leadership and juggling all of the above.
• Emily, a BAMP graduate from Bournemouth University who is passionate about creating meaningful content. Currently a Developing Creative for EMEA Creative at BBC Studios with experience in both production management and programming.
• Roshni, recent BA Media Production Graduate from Coventry University with a passion for creating relevant and interesting content. My first step into the industry was through an internship as a Creative Producer intern for Disney Channel UK and I have recently started a new role as a Developing Creative at BBC Studios. Within this role I am developing my understanding of world class creative, audience insights and creating content that resonates with a global audience.