The North East Inner City (NEIC) Initiative is a social regeneration initiative endorsed by Government, involving local communities charged with creating opportunities to bring about lasting, positive change in the area.
Over the last two weeks as part of this initiative, 12 IAPI members provided work placements through our collaboration with the National College of Ireland and their NEIC placement programme.
Often, work placements can reflect and reproduce patterns of inequality with working class students getting working class placements and middle-class pupils experiencing the benefits of “professional placements”.
“The support we received from IAPI members this year was absolutely staggering! It was amazing to see so many agencies who compete in a similar space come together to support a common goal - the NEIC TY Students.
Your involvement made a world of difference in the quality and variety of placements on offer. The feedback I've received from schools has been overwhelmingly positive, and we can't wait to partner with you all again in 2025 and beyond." David Smyth, Project Officer, NCIRL.
“The 2 girls, Maeve and Daniella arrived day 1 and completed the Javelin TY bootcamp. It’s a tough 4 days of work doing literally everything that might be asked of them across different areas of an Agency from research, product ideation, planning, branding, advertising and media. They created a new product and a full presentation and delivered it to myself and 2 others from Javelin management. They should be very proud, it was super and they have a bright future should they decide to pursue advertising as a career, I hope their teachers and family get to see their excellent work. Kyla O Kelly, Javelin
“Just dropping you a line to say what a pleasure it was to have Kwazi & Brandon this week with us. During the week the two lads worked were given a brief, they did great research, came up with some very innovative ideas and presented it back to us as a presentation in PowerPoint today. They did a huge amount of work, finished it before the deadline and were confident in presenting it today.” Sonya Johnston, OMG
“We were honoured to be asked to be part of the work experience placements again this year & really enjoyed having the students with us for the week. We find this placement program a great initiative to be part of not only for giving the students an opportunity to experience agency life, but for giving The Public House team an opportunity to learn from the students as well. The students were engaged & excited to learn about advertising & gain the knowledge & insight into how some of our recent campaigns were developed. We hope they found valuable insights into the working world & we welcome them back anytime!” Terri Turner, The Public House
“Also wanted to say the student David we had in this week was fantastic - when he started he said he wanted to work in real estate (I blame all the TV shows that show people earning hundreds of thousands in commission for the sale of one property!!) but by the end of the week, he said he would love our industry. I hope to get him back in over the summer.” Vaunnie McDermott, Connelly Partners
“Never mind the enthusiasm and intelligence that our two TY students showed last week whilst on work experience at Marketing Network Group, but their manners, punctuality and overall character made them an absolute pleasure to mentor and guide. They took every task assigned to them in their stride, working with everyone on our team, from the PR department to the creative and graphic design team, to gain as much as they possibly could from the entire experience. Both of the boys were not afraid to ask questions and were so eager to succeed in the assignments that were assigned which they blew out the water!!.” Conor O Neill, Marketing Network
" Omary was a pleasure to have with us at Dynamo. He showed great interest and enthusiasm to the business and the tasks we set him. We hope he enjoyed his short time with us and that he got a true flavour of what it’s like to work in commercial creative studio. We would gladly have him back if this was an area of interest for him.” Ross Giles, Dynamo
It is worth noting that this initiative would not be possible if wasn’t for the enthusiasm, time, work and effort put in by you, the members. Projects like this are laying the groundwork for the next generation of talent, that we hope we can attract to our industry in the coming years. If you would like to know more about this initiative or would like to take part in upcoming placements, please contact Keith@iapi.com.
Further placements are required for the following dates –
FEB 4-7th 2025
FEB 10-14th 2025
MAR 3 – 7th 2025
