Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) is one of the largest third level institutions in Ireland. The College of Arts and Tourism oversees some of its diverse and disparate educational programmes. The department wanted to strengthen their identity within the college and highlight their services among new audiences.
We developed an identity strategy session for the College Leadership team. This session devised ‘Idea Camp’ – the academy of creative play. Idea Camp utilises all of the talents of the college to unlock creativity in groups using a unique creative play methodology.
“In 2014, I commissioned All Good Tales to work with the senior leadership team in the College of Arts and Tourism on an identity and communications project. Their excellent understanding of the complex dynamics of the academic environment makes them ideally placed to work with senior leaders on complex communication issues and facilitate the development of creative solutions.”
John O’Connor – Dean of the College of Arts and Tourism DIT.
Identity of the College of Arts and Tourism
DIT is renowned as an education centre for creative practices. The College of Arts and Tourism teaches a wide range of subjects from media and games, to design and law, as well as culinary arts.
The purpose of this project was to listen, document, improve and ultimately perfect how the story of the both the department and the college is told.
Over two one-day sessions, we examined all elements of the story of the college and determined how to help it develop a stronger brand position in Irish higher education.
We looked at how the College of Arts and Tourism, as well as the whole of DIT, can work to be recognised by its key audiences as an internationally renowned centre for creativity.
In two strategy sessions with the leadership group, we covered the following topics:
- The future structure of the college
- Gaining insight into the other schools in the college
- Understanding the challenges and function of the college
- Examining and exploring the full potential of the college
- Looking at how the college will achieve an identity in the new campus in Grangegorman
- Thinking about what the college’s identity will be post 2017 and how to convey this
The results
The key learning from the identity strategy sessions was that creativity was the single most powerful element that binds all of the disparate elements of the College of Arts and Tourism together.
To build on this we created – ‘Idea Camp – the academy of creative play’ as a showcase for the creative talents of the College.
We developed the following mission statement:
To nurture and promote life-long creativity as an essential element of a well-rounded education.
We worked with the client to develop a methodology of creative play and developed two hugely successful summer schools for 8-12 year olds that showcased the creative talent of the college in areas like design, music, game development, media, and food. The summer programmes were attended by over 300 families. We are currently working with the client to expand the Idea Camp concept for industry and commercial audiences.