WonderWhat is a new web app designed by Arts University Bournemouth to provide insight into the creative industries and connect students to their desired creative career. A career in the creative industries can be tough to grasp, as schools may lack information on creative jobs or might not have the funding for courses to allow students to excel in what they enjoy. Simon Pride, WonderWhat Project Co-Ordinator, says that the app was, ‘designed to give schools a resource to help address the decrease in students taking creative subjects at GCSE and A level, and to inform young people about potential creative careers.’ As a student, knowing what role you want to go into can be stressful so finding out what’s out there provides a helping hand. This app is a breath of fresh air and exactly what students need to take that next exciting step towards their career.
Thankfully, after high school I decided to dive deep and find out about the creative industries independently, otherwise I wouldn’t have found my true passion which is graphic design. I think if this app was to be provided to students by all schools, colleges, and universities then many more students would feel encouraged to join the joyful experience of a career in the arts.
WonderWhat is a tool where you can discover your bright future in the creative industries. You select your favourite pieces of art and design from a Pinterest style layout and then discover your future career path. The web app will then show you everything that you need to know about jobs, universities, courses, skills, and advice linked to your career match.
Through this app, I have gained knowledge about: the skills I need to develop, my art style from the art and design images I’ve chosen, potential jobs linked to my career path and university courses with honest ratings to help me decide the best option for me. WonderWhat is accessible for diverse audiences, featuring closed captioning, an illustrated character who talks you through each step, different accessibility settings within the uni buddy chat feature, and the choice of design elements such as changing font and page background colour for readability. WonderWhat is easy to follow along with and leads you to many different sources of information. For example, after selecting different beautiful pieces of art that I liked from Pinterest, the app then showed me my #1 job match which was animation and illustration. This was a lovely surprise because I hadn’t realised that a theme throughout my graphic design work tends to be adding illustrations of diverse people and symbols only when they fit with the theme or topic and turning my work into animated gifs and scenes.
Through WonderWhat, I have gained new information about job roles that compliment animation and illustration degrees such as, artworker, exhibition designer and multimedia specialist. Also, WonderWhat shows you different degree courses on UCAS based on your #1 job match which I think is really smart and accommodates the needs of students at different stages. WonderWhat makes you feel listened to and cared for no matter where you’re at in your education or career journey. If every education provider introduced their students to this app before choosing which university or college they want to go to, I imagine their choices would change and they would feel more confident and secure with their decision. Would you like to chat to a university ambassador? Thankfully, WonderWhat has a friendly chat feature available, powered by uni buddy. I love this feature as it’s like you’re talking to a friend and getting some advice from them. It can help you answer many questions that will put you at ease when beginning university. You can ask anything! Such as, what clubs and societies can I get involved with? What’s the accommodation like? How is the course? And so much more! I think chatting to other students on the same course or at the same university is important because this can help you meet new people and could spark a creative collaboration.
Included on the app was a quote by Brian Selznick – “I love being an illustrator because I get to read really great stories, work with amazing people, travel and see places I never would’ve seen. And I get to draw all the time.” Hearing success stories just like Brian’s is inspiring and may make you want to become an illustrator. Students seeing this may get that extra push that they need to follow their dreams and invest their precious time into a valued creative course. It’s important that you’re given the correct resources within education to reach your potential. I think it’s time that teachers start providing those resources in their classes though the WonderWhat web app and allowing their students to go online and begin their career match choices through the Pinterest style art and design image picker and receive their career match. This will help them finally join our creative community and begin their arts career. WonderWhat web app is the way forward if you want to strengthen your skills, begin a new career path, or start your colourful journey into the creative industries.
Author: Lauren Entwisle