Fuse x Shillington

We’re massively excited to announce that Fuse has partnered up with Shillington Education - the original graphic design bootcamp. Shillington offers graphic design courses to kickstart your creative careers. Best of all, they have courses available in several locations such as Manchester, Sydney, New York City and many more, for aspiring creatives. In the past, Fuse has collaborated with former graduates from Shillington, such as Louise Ruiz - who spoke at Fuse’s Speak-Up event in early 2020, and Hajra Mubashar, who recently published a piece on Fuse.

Our partnership with Shillington is something we’ve always strived for. We’ve always acknowledged the diversity of their student pool and because of that, our partnership offers graduates/students of Shillington Education, who identify from being a part of any racialised/minority ethnic group, to instantly join one of our chapter's creative directories (dependent on where they may based) so they have a place to showcase themselves, their work and link back to their portfolios.

We are also keen on inviting graduates/students to take part in takeovers we've hosted across our Instagram and Twitter pages to keep elevating what they do.

Before our announcements, we spoke to Shillington about what’s next for them, the partnership between us and how you can become a student at Shillington. You can also read about what we had to say to Shillington at shillingtoneducation.com/blog/fuse-interview/

Hello! Can you tell everyone reading a bit about yourself, and also Shillington? Why did Shillington begin?

Shillington is a graphic design college with six campuses across the world— in London, Manchester, New York, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne— and a dedicated online course. We teach an innovative, fast-paced curriculum, taught by practicing designers, that allows our students to start a creative career as quickly as possible. Our two offerings allow anyone to become a graphic in three months full-time or nine months part-time. All our graduates leave Shillington with a glowing portfolio and a world of knowledge and skills, ready to tackle the design industry.

Shillington was founded back in 1997 by our CEO Andrew Shillington. Andrew used to run a busy design studio, but kept coming up short on his hunt for junior designers. There was plenty of passion, but the graduates just didn't have the technical skills or ability to work in a professional setting. That's why Shillington was born—pioneering a new way of learning for design students to fast-track their creative career and gain everything you need to land a job in the design industry. Almost 25 years later and Shillington is global, but our ethos and mission remains the same.

If you could describe the staff and students that are a part of Shillington, what would you say? How would you describe them?

First and foremost, our students and staff are Shillington. They are the most important part of what we do.

Our global teaching team is made up of practicing designers. This means that everyone who teaches for us, whether in person or online, full-time or part-time, are all creatives with their ears to the ground in the design world. All our Shillington teachers have had different routes into design—we're very proud to have some of our former students teaching. This means that, as a global team, we've got it all covered. We see a huge range of work produced by our teachers—from branding for a Nepalese dumpling restaurant to a handwritten calligraphy practice.

Meanwhile, there's one thing that connects our entire student community across the world and that's creativity. All our students have the unmistakable urge to be creative and that's why they study with us—to manifest that urge into the exciting, dynamic career that is graphic design. Speaking from our own perspective, at the start of every course its so exciting to see a new intake of students uniting with a common goal and becoming part of this community.

Though, this doesn't stop at graduation. We have an amazing community of what we call our Shillumni (Shillington + alumni, get it?) who are all in far flung reaches of the globe but stay connected through their shared passion for graphic design that was nurtured at Shillington

From an outsider's perspective, you've always had a diverse pool of students - ranging from geographical locations, to students from different racial backgrounds - is that something Shillington will always strive for? Why?

As we said before we have six campuses across the world in New York, London, Manchester, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and we've always been lucky enough to have students study abroad with us—from Peru, Singapore, Iraq and more! Our Online course, which launched in September 2020, has also opened us up to even more wannabe designers across the world. On our current Online courses we have students from Japan, Ecuador, Jamaica and more.

With a quick creative career change being a big motivating factor behind students choosing to study with Shillington, we have also seen people with a huge range of occupational backgrounds do the course. We have had oyster farmers, bus drivers, pilots, teachers, nurses and more take the jump with us.

Though as a design education provider, we aware of the unfortunate lack of diversity in the design world and the design industry. To help combat this, we are pleased to announce our new Diversity in Design scholarships. This year, as an addition to our annual half scholarship program open to all, we have partnered with Frost*collective in Sydney, Represent in London and XXXX in New York, to offer a full scholarship to aspiring designers from underrepresented groups. The selected winners will receive 100% off course fees for our September 2021 courses, as well as mentorship and post-graduation support from our industry partners.

The Diversity in Design Scholarship adds to Shillington's evolving efforts to support and strengthen equity by cultivating diverse and inclusive representation in the design industry—within our classrooms and beyond. By partnering with leaders in the creative industry, we're striving for collaborative, commitment and action from educators and employers across the international design community. We are committed to action, believe the conversation is ever-evolving and know there is always more work to be done.

We're massively excited about starting this partnership between Fuse and Shillington, how important is it for Shillington to begin this relationship? What aspects are you most excited about?

We've been admiring the work Fuse does from a distance for a while now so we're really excited about our new partnership. Fuse's M.O. of "elevating the voices and work of creatives of colour" is something that is hugely important to us at Shillington. We strive to offer all our students is the best possible chance of employment and the partnership with Fuse is an extension of this. We feel that working together will help to further secure the best possible chance of employment for our students of colour, both in cities with existing Fuse chapters and those without. With our global reach, we hope to see new Fuse chapters being opened by Shillumni in cities around the world—engaging with and creating opportunities for other creatives of colour.

The thing that most excites about the partnership is not about us, it's where the partnership will be able to take our graduates, particularly our graduates of colour who have not always been offered the same level of representation in the design industry.

For anyone reading who might be interested in starting a career in Graphic Design, why should they pick a course at Shillington? How can they get involved? Where can they go to find more?

We could go on and on about why you should study at Shillington, but we think it's better for our graduates to do it themselves—they know better than anyone what it's like to study with us. We also think the our student work speaks for itself. All this work was produced on one of our courses by someone just like you.

In our words, Shillington is the perfect way to make the switch and launch your creative career. On our fast-paced course, you will learn everything you need, including design theory and essential programs, to start working as a graphic designer from practicing graphic designers. You'll graduate with a polished portfolio, your key to the industry, and be ready to start applying for jobs in just three months full-time or nine months part-time.

We're always happy to chat with potential students so get in touch with your local campus to chat through the different course options or if you have any questions. Alternatively, pop along to one of our Info Sessions. These are a great way to learn more about the course and meet some of our teachers and graduates face-to-face or on Zoom (it is 2021 after all!)

What's next for Shillington and it's students?

We are constantly keeping our fingers on the design pulse—evolving and refining our course content to make the best it possibly can be. We are always looking ahead and predicting what is going to happen in the industry so we're able to keep our curriculum industry relevant and produce graduates who will fit seamlessly into studios. Believe us when we say there's a lot of very exciting things going on behind-the-scenes!

Obviously the pandemic has been rocky for education, but we've seen over 400 designers graduate since the start of it, as well as launched a whole new Online course. So, we're excited to see how this develops with our next intake in September—we hope to see even more students join us from places they weren't able to before. We have an amazing tool here to see which Online stream will work best where you are in the world. We're also looking forward to moving all our in-person courses back to campus and slowly starting up in-person events and Graduate Exhibitions over the coming months.

On top of this, we are always exploring new avenues to reach audiences. At our heart, we want the course to be as accessible to as many people from as many backgrounds as possible. We're really thrilled to be able to do this through opportunities like our Diversity in Design scholarship.

Finally, we'll continue on the same mission we have been on for the last 25 years: letting people realise their dreams, change careers and become incredible graphic designers.

Make sure you check out Shillington and what they have to offer, here: shillingtoneducation.com

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Be sure to also check out this list of Virtual Summer Camps by Juni Learning: junilearning.com/blog/guide/virtual-summer-camps/