Bristol Tech Fest

Written by our Creative Co-Director, Martha King

I recently had the pleasure of chairing a panel at Bristol Tech Fest titled ‘Creative Technology Careers, Skills & Training – who doesn’t have access and what are we going to do about it?’

The panel was organised in collaboration between myself and Danielle Rose (Network Producer) at Pervasive Media Studio / Watershed.

Many big tech companies are rolling back on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policies and our communities are facing increasing injustices. A recent Sutton Trust report (the ‘Opportunity Index’) highlighted that parts of Bristol – especially in the East and South – rank among the worst in England for opportunities and prospects for young people. At a time like this, it felt more essential than ever to come together to discuss this topic, shine a light on good practice and explore collaborative action.

We know that Bristol is a place where many are working creatively to address barriers into Creative Tech. KWMC, for example, has been working for nearly 30 years in Knowle West, South Bristol, to create opportunities and programmes for young people and emerging creatives to move into the creative tech world.

On our panel, we had a great line-up of people working hard in this field. Our speakers included:

• Reema Lorford, CEO – Gritty Talent
• Coral Manton, artist-technologist, game developer, Lecturer in Creative Computing at Bath Spa University and MyWorld Fellow.
• Frazer Meakin, Director (Theatre & Film), Movement Director, Educator and MyWorld Fellow.
• Naomi Smyth, Creative tech facilitator at The Studio In Bath, Immersive and digital theatre artist and researcher

We kicked off the panel discussion by exploring what the speakers saw as some of the main barriers to working in the sector:

The problem of badly paid entry-level jobs, high-risk freelance work and the talent drain were highlighted. There is not enough holding through career journeys or support for mid-career creatives. People raised that not enough support exists to really address class and confidence – the ‘postcode lottery’ was mentioned in relation to the fair distribution of resources and opportunities, alongside a decline in youth centres and issues caused by a lack of infrastructure in rural and city-edge places. The lack of transparency around what creative tech is, what a creative technologist does, and how to access valuable networks is an issue that needs addressing. It was seen as rare to find opportunities for creatives to access high-end technologies and be resourced to experiment and fail.

We then turned to the second part of the panel’s title, ‘what are we going to do about it?’ and heard about examples of where the panel are working to increase equitable access and career development within the creative industries:

The importance of going into schools and looking at teacher CPD was highlighted by the work that Frazer Meakin has done through his recent MyWorld fellowship. The creation of opportunities for people to get hands on, to reclaim the skills of repair and to creatively demystify tech was highlighted by Coral Manton as important – she does a lot of this through her art projects like ‘Looking for the Cloud’ or ‘Women Reclaiming AI for Activism’. Skills bootcamps were shared by Reema at Gritty Talent as a great way to support people and Naomi talked about the potential of opening resources within universities and showing more people what is possible – like MyWorld have been doing through their skills development workshops.

The final question we discussed was ‘It could be said that we have been having these kinds of conversations as a sector for a long time – has any progress been made and are there any improvements and wins that people have observed?’’

People agreed that while good work is happening, more is needed — including cross-disciplinary collaboration and stronger partnerships and pathways. It felt key to involve employers in these conversations, identify where the money is, and connect more directly to pipelines: to demystify tech, foster collaboration, and go deeper into collectively shaping what a ‘good’ career in tech looks like. Funding that builds and sustains beyond short-term projects was described as the dream.

Speakers’ final thoughts included: if you are a professional in the creative industry, remember that just one day of your time could make a significant difference to a young person’s life. Let’s work together to remove expectations, embrace failure, think outside our sectors and explain what creative tech is and what creative technologists do. An idea was shared: what about collaborating to create some cross-disciplinary apprenticeships to put Bristol on the map?

It was a rich discussion with lots of food for thought and new connections made. Get in touch if you’d like to connect and talk more.

We are hosting a conversation at KWMC in Knowle West on 27^th November 2025 called ‘Learning for a Class(less) Digital Future’ – where we will be exploring similar topics and looking at ways forwards together. If you are curious or working in this field, please join us – get your free ticket here.

Special thanks to the speakers and to Danielle Rose (Network Producer) at Pervasive Media Studio / Watershed and Becky Rock-Evans (MyWorld Event Manager) at University of Bristol for co-organising this panel, as well as to TechSpark for organising the festival.