KE Staff Awards 2022 Placemaking Award: Creative Futures 

The winner of the Placemaking Award is Creative Futures.

The Placemaking award recognises location-focused collaborative Knowledge Exchange initiatives that demonstrate the positive change that KE activity can achieve in local context.

Last year’s winner, Creative Futures aims to unleash the creative and entrepreneurial potential of residents in South London. The focus is on people aged 18-25 from under-represented groups within the creative industries, as a response to rising youth unemployment in the area.

The pandemic has contributed to an increase in gender, race and socio-economic inequalities in the creative industries. To challenge these issues, UAL partnered with Stride to extend the graduate incubation programme for South London residents. The 12-month programme targets young people who are informally engaged in creative activity as well as existing businesses.

UAL has a strong connection across Stride’s South London Boroughs through public and community engagement programmes, as well as within the wider creative industries. This includes connections with organisations OneTech, Livity, Horniman, Migration Museum and Africa Centre. These organisations work with the project steering group to target local communities for Creative Futures.

Creative Futures modules are delivered by UAL’s large pool of industry experts, who also provide professional mentoring support to participants.