When it matters, you show up. And last week, our director Rebecca did exactly that, sitting down with Richard Parker, West Midlands Mayor, to talk about something close to our hearts: the future of creative education in the Black Country.
The roundtable, hosted by the Black Country Chamber of Commerce at Beacon Vision, brought together voices from across the region to tackle some big questions. Nightlife economy, youth employment, skills gaps. Important stuff, all of it. But for us at Eighty3, one issue stood out above the rest.
Wolverhampton University’s School of Creative Industries is facing proposed cuts, and that concerns us deeply. The Black Country has always punched above its weight when it comes to creativity, craft, and making things that matter. That tradition doesn’t sustain itself. It needs investment, it needs institutions, and it needs people willing to back the next generation of designers, makers, and thinkers who are coming through. Without the right training on their doorstep, where do those young people go? And more to the point, where does that leave the region’s creative businesses in ten years’ time?
Eighty3 was built in the Black Country and we’re staying in the Black Country. Our home at The Warehouse in Brierley Hill has seen some brilliant minds come through the doors, and we want that to keep happening. We need local universities producing local talent. We need creative education to be treated as the serious economic and cultural asset it genuinely is, not a line item to be trimmed when budgets get tight.
Rebecca made sure that perspective was heard at the table. Not with grand speeches or polished talking points, just a straightforward, honest case for why creative sector training matters to businesses like ours and to the communities we’re all part of. That’s how we think change gets made. You turn up, you speak plainly, and you make the case.
We’re proud to have had our voice in that room. And we’ll keep making it, for as long as it needs to be made.
