Open Tech Calendar

Collaborate with games studios and educators on best practice recruitment & education, and hear diverse young people's game career pathways

About this Event

READY, PLAYER… LEARN

Influential summit returns in 2021 with over 30 leaders from games studios, universities, colleges in a new interactive format.

The virtual event will feature inspirational sessions for studios and educators to collaborate and solve education and recruitment challenges heightened by the pandemic.

Covid has caused massive upheaval in education while recruiters have faced challenges in hiring and onboarding the finest new talent to maintain the games industry’s headlong growth.

With Brexit and new immigration rules, it’s never been more important for the UK games industry to nurture home-grown future talent.

The Games Education Summit will tackle these key issues – and more – during a two-day event uniquely curated for games studios, educators and recruiters.

On Day 1 you'll hear cutting edge best practice, with innovators and leaders in games companies and education sharing how they’ve successfully adapted their programmes to work during the pandemic.

On Day 2 students, interns and young developers will deliver valuable insights into their pathways towards careers in games, and what they need from educators and studios.

Topics and themes covered will include:

- Ready, Player... Learn - The future of learning in a post-Covid world
- Diversity: How games studios and educators are changing the profile of the workforce
- State of the art games recruitment: How studios have worked with educators to identify and hire new talent during the pandemic
- Covid course curation: Further & Higher educators at the cutting edge share their tips and tricks
- Pathways to games in a pandemic: New hires into games studios share how they transitioned into their jobs
- The new apprenticeships and Internships
- ‘My Student Journey’ – Students to feedback on their own experiences

GamesEd21 speaker highlights include:

Aurore Dimopoulos, Unity

Simon Nelson, Nord Anglia Education (former CEO of FutureLearn)

Errol Ismail, Studio Director, Fabrik Games

Carrie Warwick, Programme Leader - Design, Bolton University

Marcia Deakin, NextGen Skills Academy

Nick Duncombe, Playground Games

GamesEd21 is produced by the BGI, a charity for games culture, skills and diversity.

GamesEd21 is the third in an annual series of conferences to support games educators and developers, enabling more collaboration, dialogue and best practice sharing between Further and Higher Education organisations and the games industry.

GamesEd is one of scores of events that will run during Games Careers Week, created by the BGI, Grads in Games and Into Games.