Building skills for the future: a Q&A with Heledd Morgan

My current role is Lead Change Maker at the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales - a job title that often makes people smile. Essentially, change-making is about having the confidence and spotting the opportunities to support and challenge the public sector in Wales to apply the world-leading Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. My role is to be an advocate for future generations and I do this by raising awareness, providing training, giving feedback, doing research and lobbying on policy and legislation. I have also been the lead for the Commissioner's policy priority of Skills for the Future.

Prior to this job, I was Partnerships Manager for a Local Authority in the South Wales valleys. I joined the newly-established Commissioner's team in 2017 on secondment initially, as I was implementing the Act on the ground, working with local public, private and voluntary sector partners to set collective objectives that would improve social, cultural, economic and environmental well-being for the area.

It is a consistent finding of my Skills for the Future work that employers are looking for employees with skills in creativity, problem-solving, communication and independent learning now; and this need is only growing with technological changes making it easier to automate many job roles. These changes are also having inequal consequences - with technological advances often benefiting white, able-bodied and middle class males.

Creative qualifications can help learners navigate some of the uncertainties of the world we live in and come up with creative solutions to many of the challenging issues (like the nature and climate emergency, economic austerity, demographic change and political unrest) that we face globally; hopefully leading to not only improved employment prospects, but a life well-lived for learners now and those coming in to the world in future.