BIMA Digital Day 2019

Every year we take part in the BIMA digital day, an initiative run by the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) that partners digital agencies and local schools with the aim of encouraging young people to consider a career in digital.

We've taken part every November for the last 5 years and have previously be paired up with a normal school and delivered to a class or two of students, usually a maximum of 50. This year was different as we partnered with North East futures UTC.

The UTC, or University Technical College, is a brand new concept to Newcastle and is part of a UTC network across the country which aim to balance of a strong core curriculum and technical qualifications to give their students a more rounded experience of school. It opened in September 2018 and has since attracted over 200 students.

The great thing about a UTC is that it’s different from a 'normal' school offering a stronger focus on science and technical subjects including digital. Because all of the students at the UTC do computer engineering we thought that the BIMA digital day would be appropriate for all of them and hatched a plan to deliver the first ever digital day to an entire school.

With the help of the committed and passionate UTC staff and 6 digital experts from Enigma we presented BIMA content about the digital industry including what it’s like to work in digital, how to get into the industry and the type of projects that we produce for our clients.

The day also includes three challenges set by real companies and designed to give the students a real world brief to work on. This year's challenges were:

• BBC Micro:bit and World’s Largest Lesson – Create a piece of technology to save our oceans, removing plastic and other pollutants.
• Wimbledon – Develop app content for myWimbledon (Wimbledon’s personalised digital experience) to appeal to the younger generation.
• Epam – Create a campaign that will inspire young people to choose a career in digital, to create the future and ultimately to change the world through digital.

In just a few hours students have to form teams and go through a condensed project process from discovery through design and refinement of ideas to delivery of a pitch presentation at the end of the day. The winners from each challenge are submitted to a national competition which BIMA runs and could see the students getting to visit the organisation they created ideas for.

As ever the standard of the ideas created was very high and the amount of work which the students manage to fit into just one day was equally impressive. We had over 20 teams of students working across the different challenges, each delivered an elevator pitch before the top team for each challenge was shortlisted to present their idea to the whole school.

The winners of challenge one came up with a range of solutions starting with an app that allows user to scan the barcode of any product to get information on what it was made of, how long it would take to recycle and where the nearest recycling point. They also developed smart recycling bins that linked with the app and helped customers to recycle more effectively.

Challenge two winners developed a VR Tennis simulator which means that anyone can play at Wimbledon at any time. They also had inclusive options for disabled people and were going to tour round secondary schools to engage with young people. Their VR experience also had a social element that is designed to connect people through tennis.

The winners of the third challenge created a wide ranging campaign to engage young people with the digital industry, they used both physical in school engagement combined with social media channels, they too were keen to promote inclusion and focused specifically on encouraging more women into digital to even up what can be a more male dominated industry.

We would strongly recommend the digital day to fellow agencies and schools, the content BIMA provides is excellent. Working with students is rewarding, surprising and inspiring in equal measure, the students also get a lot out of the day and are always engaged. We have already had some great feedback and will definitely be signing up again next year. Sign up here.