Creative Cafe serves up excitinginspiration for local students

They learned about the businesses and took part in practical challenges set by them.

The Creative Café event took place at the White Rock Theatre on 02 July, with the aim of connecting young people with business professionals based locally to inspire the pupils’ future career choices.

The initiative was organised by Culture Shift and funded by Hastings Borough Council, Rother District Council and East Sussex County Council.

Cllr Dawn Poole lead member for regeneration at Hastings Borough Council explained: “Each participating business had the opportunity to tell the pupils what their job involved and what it was like day-to-day, followed by practical challenges such as designing a chair, designing a structure on a cliff, editing a magazine article, learning how to document events and how to take photographs in different locations.

“Businesses involved included John Cole photographer, Oaten Architects, Maggie Alderson fashion editor and writer, Otti Albietz musician, Christine Shepherd The Kula furniture, Susan Ward curator at Hastings Museum, Catherine Donaldson film maker, Nikki Leach education programmer at the White Rock Theatre, Nathan Lauder graphic designer and Andrew Harries theatre director.

“We are very grateful to all these businesses for volunteering their time to inspire the pupils.

“Feedback from pupils and the businesses involved was very positive. The businesses were impressed with how quickly pupils got involved with the challenges, the skills they bought to them and their enthusiasm for finding out about the different roles in the sector.

“The young people enjoyed meeting different local businesses and being able to engage with them informally in a dynamic and fun way.

“Enabling young people to have an understanding and experience of different businesses is important to us all.”

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