CWL NEWS ARCHVE

This is the CWL News and Funded Project News Archive. It draws an informative picture on which stories relevant to the creative industries were happening during the AHRC-funded period of Creativeworks London between 2012 and 2016.

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Tech City UK Expands Digital Business Academy to Meet Britain’s Growing Digital Skills Demands

Tech City UK announces the expansion of its flagship Digital Business Academy programme and the latest figures on the programme’s successes to date. New course content on how to track early-stage startup performance will be introduced in response to the growing demand across the nation for the essential skills needed to start, run, or join a digital business.

With the addition of new course content from founding provider Founder Centric, members of the public will now be able to access nine online courses from world-class educational institutions and industry experts.

Since launching in November last year, more than 12,000 users have signed up to the platform, and the number of users that have completed the courses has reached up to 26% – almost four times industry average.

User trends have also revealed that more than half of Digital Business Academy participants want to start their own business, pointing to a rapidly evolving entrepreneurial culture across the UK.

Key stats demonstrating the hunger for digital learning that exists across the UK include:

– 12,000 sign ups across the UK since launch
– Course completion rates of up to 26%
– 48% of users are under 30
– 39% of users are over 35
– 56% of current users want to start their own business
– 23% of current users want to grow their existing business
– 21% of current users want digital skills to get a job

The average satisfaction score for the current courses is over 8 out of 10 based on a survey of DBA learners undertaken by Tech City UK

Tech City UK CEO, Gerard Grech, comments: “Campus life and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive. Digital Business Academy represents a revolutionary shift in attitude in how we approach learning and accessing the right opportunities in a fast-moving industry. From canvassing digital businesses in Tech City and across the UK, we recognise access to talent is an issue and we are tackling the issue head on”.

The increasing demand for digital skills is being driven by the growth of the UK’s tech sector. The recent findings from Tech City UK’s Tech Nation report found that digital employment is set to grow faster than any other sector with growth of 5.4% by 2020. Of the digital companies analysed for the report, one third of respondents cited a lack of local talent as one of their biggest barriers to growth. Digital employment is a national phenomenon with the report finding that 1.46 million people are employed by digital technology companies across the UK, with 74% of digital jobs are based outside of London.

To read the full press release click here.

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Queen Mary - University of London
Arts & Humanities Research Council
European Union
London Fusion

Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.