Help us get government funding

Dear mentor,

I desperately need your help with a bit of lobbying.

We need to persuade Skillset, the sector skills council responsible for funding further education in advertising, to make it possible for schools like ours to access further education funding when we deliver the Diploma in Communication Arts to learners.

So far, nearly 200 industry professionals have contributed hundreds of comments on Curriculum Wiki. The result is a curriculum written by the best people to understand what the next generation of talent needs to learn. This is the first time that a curriculum has been written by practitioners rather than academics, using wiki tools to improve collaboration.

We shared the first draft of the curriculum with our awarding body last week. You can download these drafts here, here and here.

The purpose of this exercise is to show that our qualification deserves public funding because it has the collective support of the industry. Sector skills councils have a responsibility for making sure that public funding is made available to qualifications that have the support of the companies that will eventually employ graduates.

Please demonstrate your support for the qualification by putting your name to a petition letter. We will be collecting petition letters and then pass them over to our awarding body and to Skillset.

I have written an example letter of support below, which you can copy & paste onto your company letterhead. It’s OK to edit it if you want.

When you have written your letter, please send it to me by email at marc_lewis@mac.com

Thank you so much

marc

To Whom It May Concern:

The School of Communication Arts has asked me to express my support for the curriculum it has been developing in partnership with the advertising industry.

To the best of my knowledge, the qualification being created by the school is the first to have been written by practitioners of an industry. I support the curriculum because it has been developed in collaboration with the advertising industry, using wiki tools to ensure that the contents can be constantly updated.

Because our industry is so fast moving, I support the initiative of a curriculum that is written and constantly updated by my industry peers. This will help to ensure that graduates are better prepared when we give them their first jobs.

I hope that this letter of support will go some way towards persuading policy makers and the sector skills council to put their weight behind this qualification, so that it can be delivered to learners at School of Communication Arts and other art schools across the country.

Best regards,

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