BBC Birmingham at Birmingham Digital Week: Let's 'Get' Digital

This week BBC Birmingham produced the first ever Birmingham Digital Week. Working with partners across the City, we've spent the last 6 months putting together an exciting programme of events showcasing the myriad of digital activity in the region.

Birmingham Creative City Partnership, Arts Council England, Creative England, Birmingham City Council, Creative Skillset, and Birmingham City University have all worked with us to lay on a packed schedule of training, events, workshops and panels aiming to develop skills, share knowledge and create networking opportunities for Birmingham’s digital sector. Featuring a mixed programme of free and paid for activities, the week has been designed to support the development of the creative industries in our city, and celebrate some of the great digital innovations and opportunities that Birmingham can deliver.

Some of the highlights of the week include a Gaming Day at the Aston Innovation Campus at Faraday Wharf, focussing on the West Midlands as a Gaming Industry hub, with expert practitioners sharing their insights into this fast emerging and blossoming sector. Meanwhile, BBC Birmingham hosted Access All Areas, an online behind-the-scenes glimpse into the 24 hour world of 'BBC Brum' and our programme makers. 

And today , I’m at Birmingham City Universities ReThink Media Conference, which as part of Birmingham Digital Week is looking at how best to utilise social media and digital content for businesses and organisations. I’m looking forward to hearing from former Google director Frank Golding, and our own BBC Head of Future Media, Ralph Rivera alongside a host of social media, journalism and vlogging experts.

Birmingham Digital Week is our contribution to the major UK Wide 'Make It Digital’ initiative, launched only last week by Director General Tony Hall. Birmingham, with its youthful population is well placed to make the most of the opportunities on offer. The UK as a whole is facing a significant skills shortage with an estimated 1.4m digital professionals needed over the next five years. It is why the BBC Academy is such a vital piece of the BBC Birmingham jigsaw - just as important as our programme making teams in building a distinctive, vibrant and creative base, fit and ready for the future

One of the great opportunities of the Make It Digital Season is the announcement of a UK-wide Digital Apprenticeship scheme, aimed at helping up to 5,000 young, unemployed people boost their digital skills and get a foot on the career ladder. This will be run by the BBC Academy from their new home here at BBC Birmingham.

The Academy has been behind the scheme to create a digitally savvy workforce and launched the pilot in Birmingham at The Custard Factory, next to our own Innovation Unit at Fazeley Studios. Fifty young people were recruited through jobcentres in Birmingham and Solihull. Over the next 12 months we expect to see approximately 400 young people in Birmingham and the Black Country benefit.

It will be the largest traineeship of its kind due to a major partnership between the BBC, Department for Work and Pensions and Skills Funding Agency, and supported locally by a range of Birmingham organisations.

It’s just a taste of some of the groundbreaking work of the Academy and the expertise it brings to our BBC Birmingham operation.

As many of you may have heard, I’ll be leaving BBC Birmingham and returning, as planned, next week to be re-united with my family up north.

My role as Head of Business Development was to get activity and change started – help drive the rebuilding of our base, broker new partnerships, bring new teams to Birmingham, set up new initiatives like the one at Fazeley Studios and bring more events and activity to the city. We’ve made real progress but it really is just the start. Joe Godwin, the newly appointed Director of BBC Birmingham and The BBC Academy, is a well respected leader with a real passion for the city and region. He has great plans to build on the work thus far and will be keeping you updated on progress over the months ahead.

One of the things I said in my very first blog is the importance of grasping the incredible potential we have in the region and to build a creative, sustainable model that is future proofed for the rapidly changing broadcasting sector. We want a clear and distinctive identity that brings new opportunities and connects with our audiences through our programmes and services

I firmly believe that the work over the past year or so has kick-started that process and I am confident that BBC Birmingham has a vital role to play in a BBC that is re-shaping itself before our very eyes. We can’t do this alone and need to work with partners to create real impact and transformational change. Birmingham Digital Week is an example of what we can achieve when we join up the creative dots scattered across the City – it really is just the beginning.

Tommy Nagra is Head of Business Development, BBC Birmingham

• Read all of Tommy's posts on the About the BBC Blog.