Getting creative about education at Cannes

The advertising industry is at a crucial crossroads, with technologies like AI and Augmented Reality set to open up new forms of creativity and content delivery, and redefine the way brands and customers communicate. While incredibly exciting, this is unfamiliar territory for most marketers, and businesses are now scrambling to fill their ranks with young hires that are both creative and digitally literate.

This is easier said than done. While young people have access to digital technologies and creative outlets in their personal lives, this is a whole new world for the academic institutions shaping the talent of tomorrow. If we want to inspire students to apply these skills and pursue creative careers, the worlds of business and education must understand each other and collaborate more closely.

This is precisely the goal of the Cannes Lions Educator’s Summit, an event I spoke at yesterday as a part of a panel regarding learning with tech platforms. For educators, it offers a unique opportunity to draw inspiration from the Cannes Festival of Creativity and apply their learnings in the classroom. For businesses, it offers a look ahead at the skills they will need to succeed in the future. More importantly, the Summit will hopefully serve as a catalyst for companies to lend their support to the education system, so we can make the skills of tomorrow part of a today’s curriculum.

I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with leaders from three of the world’s biggest tech brands at Cannes to tackle this issue: Joi Jann Schwarz, Global Director of Market Development at LinkedIn, Rishi Jobanputra, Senior Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, Colleen Stauffer, Head of Global Business Marketing at Pinterest, and Noha Wagih Bashir, EMEA Team Lead, Blueprint Training at Facebook.

Together, we discussed the role technology can play in transforming the education system:

1.  Empower and enable. Technology will play a huge role in the future of work, and digital literacy will therefore be an essential skill for students to gain in school. On the flip side, education institutions will be able to make use of technology themselves to help identify the hidden talent market and ‘level the playing field’ among students.
2. Community building. What do LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook and Adobe have in common? They all provide platforms for educators to create and host their own content, and build their own community. Colleen Stauffer from Pinterest highlighted that teachers are actually one of the largest growing audiences using their tool.
3. Adaptive learning styles that are fit-for-purpose. Gen Z students prefer ‘hands-on learning’, where the student is actively engaged in the learning process. Tools and technology in the form of drawing and illustration software on tablets, for example, can help meet tomorrow’s learning needs, and provide valuable teaching aids for educators.
4. Collaboration, not competition. It’s not about competition, it’s about collaboration. Industry and educators need to collaborate to ensure they are building the right foundations for the next generation of creatives – or otherwise - and make sure the learning process is as easy as possible for students and educators alike.

People are more creative at a younger age. Our concept of what’s possible is more fluid, which means there are fewer barriers standing in the way or stopping us from exploring big ideas. Some might dismiss this as a romantic notion, but remember that most jobs of tomorrow haven’t been invented yet. How can we expect to prepare students for this future if we continue to educate them the same way?

Here is a quick breakdown of how creativity benefits students as they move through the education system, and why it becomes increasingly important as they get older.

• Primary school

We have more time to flex our creative muscle at this age, more opportunity to do so, and best of all, an inquisitive mindset. Creativity helps students at this age to develop problem-solving skills, forces contemplation and critical thinking, and inspires them to form their own perspectives on what they’ve learned.

• Secondary school

As test-taking becomes more common, creative outlets provide freedom from too much structure and rigidity, empowering students to start connecting the dots between what they’ve learned at school and what’s happening in the real world. Crucially, creativity levels the playing field, as opposed to exams and traditional reporting that may only allow some to flourish. 

• Higher Education

It’s not uncommon to hear graduates say “I learned more after one week of work than I learned after four years of university”. This is not a knock on academic institutions, but it does mean we need to better prepare students for the real world by exposing them to real world challenges in addition to academic ones. This helps them build confidence and self-direction, as well as their own stylistic path.

Instead of featuring more prominently over time, the role of creativity diminishes as students move through the grade system and pressure mounts to prepare them for high school, college and the professional world. This is understandable, but it also means students in higher grades are more concerned with how their work is measured than with what they are learning. Most teachers agree, which is why the creative community at Cannes is working with them to flip the script. Together, our aim is to help students communicate with impact, create without limits, and build the right skills for their future. 

At Adobe, we believe in creativity and opportunity for all. That’s why we continue to make our latest creative tools and technologies available in the classroom, most recently through a partnership with the London Grid for Learning LGfL. Through the EdTech charity, more than 3000 schools in the UK will receive free access to Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing students to experiment with graphic design, video editing, photography, and more.

Of course, we need widespread access to creative tools and training if we want to drive change on a global scale. By opening up Adobe Spark for Education to teachers everywhere, we are putting our integrated suite of storytelling applications into the hands of students around the world so they can begin experimenting with mobile and web content, and build their digital literacy.

Today, we are reinforcing our commitment to the education system by sponsoring the Cannes Young Lions Competition, arguably the ad industry’s most inspiring opportunity for young creative talent to build new skills and showcase what they can do. The Festival has also doubled down on its 'See It Be it' programme, which aims to inspire the female creatives of tomorrow. Fifteen rising stars from around the world were given a free VIP pass to Cannes, complete with a curated learning programme and opportunities to meet with influencers from across the industry.

If employees are a business’ most valuable asset, then the educators who shape those employees’ minds as children are a business’ most valuable allies. It is therefore encouraging to see more schools adopt technologies to help students develop skills in digital media, graphic design, film, and other creative disciplines.  

However, many academic institutions still lack the resources to do so. As business, we have a vested interest in developing young people to thrive in the workforce. That makes it all the more heartening to see companies at Cannes collaborate with educators to fuel creativity and tech-savviness among the leaders of tomorrow.