Inspired Futures 2021

Posted on: 5 April 2021 in Connections in action

"Meet people from varied industries and gain an exclusive insight into their career journey and day-to-day role."

Just a week after our very first InspiredFutures event in March 2020, the pandemic hit and much like the rest of the world, we found ourselves cancelling live events and working from home. Little did we know we’d still be in a similar position a year later!

Re-Imagined

Towards the end of 2020, it became clear we needed to re-imagine our InspiredFutures event for 2021 as the pandemic was showing no signs of slowing down. The networking breakfast buffet, hundreds of attendees and CareerTreks were definitely still on hold for the foreseeable but we wanted to find a way to showcase that whilst the last year had been extremely tough, there were still positive stories to hear and opportunities out there.

With this in mind, we developed a week-long campaign which included daily podcasts, live panel talks and an inspiring keynote speech. As is such with the virtual world we’ve all come to know now, all of the events were recorded which allowed students to gain on-demand access to the content at a time best suited to them – an approach we’ve taken with the majority of events this academic year.

The Plan

The week opened with a keynote speech from Jill Hawkins, The Future Thief, covering everything from taking control of your own future to how things might look when the pandemic ends. It provided plenty for students to think about and shed a positive light on the fact that many people don’t know exactly where their career may take them.

As part of InspiredFutures2021 we hosted the first hybrid on-campus/live-streamed events since the pandemic hit. These were two panel talks, one made up of students that had completed either a year in industry placement or an internship in the last year, and the other with graduates that had secured a graduate job during the pandemic. Each panel speaker was invited to come back and share their story and insights about getting hired during the pandemic and what it was like to adjust to the virtual world. The live-stream element of these talks proved hugely popular, but it was clear that students were still keen to attend real-life events too as we had a great turn-out. Hearing such positivity from both the students and graduates was brilliant and re-affirmed all of the hard work that our team have done throughout the last academic year.

In addition to the live events, we ran a podcast mini-series with speakers from a range of organisations including TATE Liverpool, Science and Technologies Facilities Council, Hays Recruitment, Capacity Lab and The Funding Crowd. Each speaker shared their insights into how they have adapted in the last year as well as sharing hints and tips on how students could be preparing now for a career in that sector in a post-pandemic world.

In Summary

Overall, we found the newly designed event to be a success as all students that gave feedback said they enjoyed the experience and felt that it gave them things to think about in terms of career aspiration. Speaker feedback was also positive, with one saying “I really enjoyed the event, it was great to get down in person and have a taste of normality again.” 

All content is readily available to watch any time via the website and podcasts are also available on Spotify and Apple.