Creative Futures 2.0: Recap

GCSE Students Get a Taste of the Creative Industries

On Wednesday 12th February, Brandland partnered with Norwich University of the Arts to host Creative Futures, an afternoon that brought GCSE students face-to-face with the realities (and the excitement) of working in branding and design.

The premise was simple but ambitious: give students a real creative brief, pair them with industry mentors, and see what they could do in a few hours. The answer? Quite a lot.

The brief

Working with Brick Pizza, students were challenged to create a brand-new sub-brand from scratch. That meant choosing a target audience, developing a name, logo and visual identity, and designing the pizza box itself. All in one afternoon.

Guided by their mentors, teams worked through positioning questions: who is this for, what do they love, and why would they buy it? Before diving into the creative work. Brand boards were filled with colour palettes, magazine cut-outs, hand-drawn logos and slogans. One team, Cheeeeeezy, even delivered a full pitch to the judges!

The Brief:

Create a sub-brand for Brick Pizza.

The mentors

None of this would have been possible without our brilliant mentors, who gave up their afternoon to guide, encourage and challenge the students. A huge thank you to Samantha Rajasingham (UEA), Erin Stasiorowski (Four Agency), James Hale (Halekorero), Jodie Cole (Naked Marketing), Maddy Caulfield (Maddy Caulfield Animation), Emily Fairchild (UEA), Michelle Williams (Creativity Unbound), Andrew Piper (Rare Design), Benjamin Scott (Krow), Simone Brickham (Quadmark), Sophie Porter (We Are Fred) and Chloe Stockwell (Storm Brands).

Their role wasn't to provide the answers, it was to keep things moving, bring in the quieter voices, and ask the kind of questions that push ideas further. And they did exactly that.

As mentor Chloe Stockwell from Storm Brands put it: "Mentoring at this stage was incredibly rewarding: guiding their thinking while giving them the freedom to explore and push their creativity." She described how students naturally fell into roles: idea generators, note takers, sketchers and how one table was told it looked like it was "glowing" from all the colour and materials spread across it. By the end, she said, "it was a brilliant experience of stepping out, giving back, and celebrating creativity."

The judges

The students' work was judged by Robert Jones and Anika Ramani, Head of NOT Wieden+Kennedy — the branding and design arm of one of the world's most celebrated creative agencies. Anika travelled up from London for the day, and as a former City of Norwich School student and UEA alumna, she's living proof of exactly where a creative career starting in Norfolk can take you.

The impact

The best measure of a day like this isn't the work produced, it's what happens next. And the feedback from North Walsham High School tells its own story. Their teacher wrote to say the students had been "buzzing about it ever since," that parents' evening had been full of graphics students saying how much they loved the day, and that students who hadn't previously considered it now want to study graphics at college. "You really opened up a whole new world for them," she said.

That's exactly what Creative Futures set out to do. For many of these students, it was their first experience of a real creative environment, working on a real brief, with real professionals. It showed them that the skills they're developing in the classroom have a place in the working world, and that the creative industries are full of people who want to help them get there.

What's next

The students' work will be showcased at an exhibition in June 2026, giving their ideas a wider audience and a longer life beyond the workshop.

Creative Futures is part of Brandland's commitment to connecting the creative community in Norfolk, not just the people already in it, but the people on their way. If you'd like to get involved as a mentor or partner for future events, we'd love to hear from you.

With thanks to Norwich University of the Arts, Brick Pizza and all our mentors and volunteers. Our school partners, City of Norwich School and North Walsham High School. Thanks also to East of England Co-Op, whose sponsorship funded travel for students from North Walsham High School — without which they wouldn't have been able to take part. Special thanks to Andy Judd and Robert Jones for their work in bringing the day together.