Designers from across the South West are gathered at the South West Design Forum summit to launch a ground-breaking initiative called Design Buddy. Funded by Universities South West and the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, the project is aligned with three Universities – Bath Spa, Plymouth and Bournemouth, giving final year students an industry mentor to help them understand the industry, develop their portfolios and hone their skills.

Robin Bower, Business Relations Manager for Universities South West said: ‘This Flagship project will provide the framework to support and facilitate cooperation and understanding between business and HE, tapping into a rich pool of knowledge, skills and enterprise to improve the international competitiveness of both. It will nurture the creative talent and capabilities of graduates, raise expectations and ambitions through partnership, and encourage and support young entrepreneurs to found new businesses’.

For industry, it will allow the transfer of cutting edge research, knowledge and new ideas. It’s also a way of Designers inspiring the next generation and ensuring that graduates have the right skills to enter industry.

Tim Burley, Managing Director of Red Rocket “Design Buddy goes beyond mentoring, it is designed to enable a real two-way exchange of knowledge. If our professional and aspiring designers understand each other better, they can work together for the benefit of the whole industry."

This exciting pilot scheme is being run in collaboration with Bath Spa University, Arts University College Bournemouth and the University of Plymouth. The industry Buddy will only have to commit to 4 one hour long sessions over the next 12 months. The scheme is open to all senior design professionals and the buddies will be given training to improve their mentoring skills.

Roger Proctor, Managing Director of Proctor & Stevenson and Chairman of South West Design Forum said: “Design Buddies is a new, refreshing and innovative programme. Design businesses in the South West often want to engage with education and help but can be just too complex and time consuming. Most importantly business needs to keep abreast of the latest thinking. If it doesn’t then it won’t be able to help with talent retention, it will miss out on great new designers and will also find it more difficult to keep up with the latest trends and skills, particularly new thinking in online media. Participation in Design Buddies not only makes commercial sense for our business in helping find new talent but also learning about latest thinking. It is also a chance to put back something and help develop the next generation of talent, for our benefit and for that of the region.”

For further information and to sign up to be a Design Buddy please click here.