Talent doesn’t need a university degree, or A levels.
Talent pours our pints, serves our meals and delivers our post.
Talent works through the night, and dreams through the day.
Talent says the unsayable and makes the unmakeable.
​Talent is relentless, unwavering, and indifferent.

Above is what D&AD feels the creative industries are missing out on by not looking outside the conventional. By not being as – to use the word whose importance has been eviscerated by insincere use – diverse as you say you are. Perhaps as diverse as you hope to be.

D&AD is giving talent outside the conventional the help it needs to get started in real industry jobs. The programme is called Shift. It launched in the UK and is running in Sydney soon. Do these people who didn’t get to, or get through tertiary education, don’t come from anything approximating privilege – and in some cases have drifted through their young adult years – deserve to be considered by you? Listen to the three stories below. You may well be more impressed by three young creatives than you ever have been by any young creative before. I was.

Thaddaeus Brown

Maisie Plumstead

Isabel Mickleburgh

Cover image l-r: Isabel Mickleburgh, Thaddaeus Brown, Maisie Plumstead