Mooshmedia Marketing

bude

Darren Higgs

Managing Director

A creative design agency owner who needed an apprentice but couldn’t find the right type of training for him is praising Plymouth College of Art for coming to the rescue.

Darren Higgs, Managing Director of Mooshmedia Marketing in Bude, searched everywhere for an apprenticeship that would cover design for print and for the web – two very different disciplines – but could only find providers that would offer one or the other, not both.

“Nowhere we tried could come up with any solutions that suited us... until we got in touch with Plymouth College of Art and they came up with a Design Apprenticeship for him,” says Darren.

“From that point on, the college were absolutely fantastic. They put our apprentice, Tom Westlake, on a design course and said they’d enrol him on web design courses as they came up.

“The courses the college put on were fantastic. They were very thorough for what were short two-day courses. He came back a fully-fledged web designer.

“The college is so supportive, and their assessments of Tom are fantastic. They’re very encouraging about what he does.

“He’s like a sponge and absorbs absolutely everything. You only have to tell him something once and it sticks.”

Tom, 16, had only been in the job for a few months when Darren realised he had the potential to run the company. 

“Our target is for Tom to grow within the business and gain the skills and technical know-how to manage it himself on a day-to-day basis, to win new business, work closely with clients, and get the jobs out of the door at the standard our clients expect.

“After a couple of weeks, we were very, very impressed by Tom. I gave him a laptop with Adobe Creative Suite 4 to take home and get acquainted with, and he picked up the software really quickly.
“From day one, Tom has worked on fully commercial jobs. He’s been successful designing business cards, leaflets and numerous websites and has really supported me by sharing the workload on several projects.
“As we’ve been getting busier and busier, it’s been important to employ someone who understands the way we work, what’s expected of them, who we can train from scratch in technical expertise, and who doesn’t come with any bad habits.”

The benefits of hiring an apprentice have been invaluable for Mooshmedia, who say the financial rewards are great.

“Not only is it cost-effective for a business in the first two to three years - but for the apprentice, there is no doubt that they come out of the apprenticeship better off than by going to university and accumulating £15k of debt.

“I would absolutely hire an apprentice again; in fact it would be my first choice before recruiting a skilled applicant.

“Tom is a very hardworking individual so, for us, hiring an apprentice has been an excellent choice.”

Plymouth College of Art & Design