The GreenShark origin story... (and how you can help!)
- Ollie England
- Jan 21
- 6 min read
GreenShark Media has been an idea for a long time. But this isn’t the story of a life-changing day or conversation. Neither of us had a ‘eureka’ moment with a cartoon lightbulb. This was a slow realisation over half a decade of watching talented young people not knowing how to use their skills. The idea behind GreenShark was born in classrooms, car journeys and conservatories as we chatted about how we could better support young people to prepare for employment in the notoriously competitive ‘creative industries’.
Andie has spent the last decade teaching and thinking about videography, web design, social media and transferable soft skills. She treated the classroom like a media agency and encouraged young people to look beyond their coursework to get a real understanding of the type of employment that they were hoping for. She was extremely good at it.
I have spent the last decade teaching media literacy, 2D and 3D animation and motion graphics. I’ve taught classes in After Effects, Blender, Toon Boom Harmony, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, Cinema 4D, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, Krita, iMovie and probably some others. I’ve been lucky to have had time to develop technical skills in a range of software, but I was always utterly humbled by the technical brilliance of the young people I worked with. Some of their designs and sequences were breathtaking, and yet they would never be seen in public – they were just ‘coursework’.
The point of GreenShark is to help young people get seen. To help them build the confidence to get their art and creative projects in front of people who will see the value in what they can do. We have helped literally thousands of young people over the years get qualifications and certificates to show that they have been in a classroom, but how many of them have gone on to find success in a creative job? I’ll never know…
“UK creative industries exports were worth £17.9 billion in 2019. Oxford Economics estimates that the sector could grow by over 26% by 2025, contributing £132.1 billion in GVA to the economy.
Creative industries are considered a driving force in the post-pandemic economic recovery of the UK. Increased investment in the sector aims to generate an extra £28 billion for the economy by 2025 and create 300,000 more jobs.”
The government’s own statistics constantly show that the creative sector is a vital part of the UK economy. It’s one of the parts of the country we should all be actually proud of – prestige dramas, homegrown music, gaming, films, children’s TV, sport broadcasts, daytime TV – we spend so much time with these products and images every day and yet the dream of being a part of the sector that makes them seems so impossible for so many young people. Teenagers spend thousands of hours learning to draw and take pictures and film things and dream of making video games and then… find jobs in the retail or hospitality sector. All while local organisations complain about a skills shortage.
A decade ago in 2015, Bournemouth was being celebrated as the fastest growing digital hub in the country and was rightly being recognised as an exciting place to work in marketing, branding, social media, game design and similar digital agencies. Fast forward to 2025 and the council has launched a new BCP Film Office to encourage TV and film productions to work in the area and conversations have moved on to FinTech, AI, Blockchain and Web 3.0. I’ve spent many years inviting myself into lots of creative agencies and meeting freelancers and there is unanimous agreement that Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset are great places to work in digital jobs with a good quality of life and a fun community of creatives.
So how do we make it easier for young people to join in the action? And how do we stop people from moving away to London or Bristol? And more importantly, how do we encourage young people who are talented and passionate but lack the education and family network links to give them a head start into a starting position? This is why GreenShark exists. We want to help people who need support and are unsure where to start to break into this thriving industry. To celebrate the diversity of talent and the disadvantaged to use their skills to support these industries in this local area.
Andie and I have both worked hard during our education careers and have been lucky to find jobs that allowed us to share technical and creative skills with countless groups of young people. This has been rewarding (and fun) but has at times been overwhelming and frustrating due to the inability to dedicate the time and energy to the students with the most challenges.
There are plenty of confident young people who have a support network and level of ambition to help them thrive, and that’s great! But they don’t need our help. We now want to spend more time helping those that really need it. The people who have maybe missed out on a ‘media’ or ‘art’ education but are still creative and artistic. The people who have slipped through the gaps due to anxiety, or neurodiversity, or any number of other circumstances that are stopping them from trying to find creative projects. These are the people that GreenShark exist to help.
Over the last few months of 2024 and into 2025, Andie and I have met with dozens of people to try and make this happen. We’ve talked to freelancers, young people, designers, solicitors, the council, careers coaches, videographers, educators, mentors, charities, home education specialists, accountants, tech-evangelists, business owners, EHCP experts, PR professionals, parents, the jobcentre and my MP. I’ve asked them all variations of the same question – “what advice would you have to young people trying to get their first meaningful employment in a creative role in BCP / Dorset in 2024?”
The conversations have been wide-ranging, insightful, funny, infuriating and inspiring and I feel lucky to have been given so much time from such a diverse community. But the one thing that links them all is the agreement that more should be done to support young people, especially those with barriers-to-employment, to find meaningful work.
There are a huge number of amazing people helping young people with employability skills or self-employment programmes or work-readiness workshops across Dorset and the South Coast. From the conversations that we’ve had, it is clear that they have decades of experience and that there are some really successful programmes. But where they offer generic employability skills, we want to focus specifically on young people trying to find creative work. We want to work in and around these existing programmes to help support young people with creative employability skills, using our experience and local knowledge to give focussed support to young people.
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Many of the conversations that we have had with employers and freelances already working in the area have come to the same conclusion: Talent and enthusiasm is more important than qualifications and grades. We agree and now think it is crucial to help young people show off their talents and prove their enthusiasm by working on real projects and briefs to showcase their skills. Enrolling in a GreenShark program or one-on-one mentoring session empowers young people to develop the following:
· Time management skills
· Online and face-to-face communication skills
· Insight into budgeting and financial planning tools
· Networking survival guides
· Micro-volunteering opportunities to create content for local charities and businesses
· How to find and approach clients
· Strategies for dealing with amendments and revisions to projects
· CV and covering letters for permanent employment
· UCAS application and personal statements for university courses
· A showreel or portfolio to promote their work
This idea has been developing for a number of years, and we are still meeting many amazing local connections to help bring it to the people who need it the most. We know that every young person is different – with individual goals, skillsets and challenges – and we finally have the time to get to know them and help give them some direction.
We look forward to meeting and working with as many young people as we can in the coming weeks and months and we need your help to reach them. If you know anyone that might benefit from this story then please share it with them and help us connect with talented young people who are ready to be seen.
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