Tiverton High School students got a taste of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur when the school held its annual ‘Games Room’ event to help build creative writing, speaking and listening skills.
The creative event, developed by THS English teacher Jessica Marks, set more than 250 year 8 student teams the challenge to design a video game and pitch it to a panel of business dragons. They attended a series of mini-workshops led by the local business owners to find out more about topics such as branding and public speaking.
The students presented their ideas for creating and marketing a story-based video game. Shortlisted teams then pitched their game concept to the panel of judges consisting of Tiverton High School head teacher Sammy Crook, plus:
- Steve Lodge from The Oxygen Agency
- Scott Baxter from Hays Recruitment Exeter
- Emily Pike from White Siren Solutions and Tiverton High School Librarian
- Penny Wood from Penny Wood Talks
- Jason Cox from HepcoMotion
- Helen Sowerby – trainee teacher with a background in sales and marketing
The students impressed staff and judges alike with their innovative ideas – congratulations to winners Cody Douglas for his solo concept for travel game ‘The Grand Global Auto Race’ and quartet George Sparks, Megan Rouse, Roxy Brewer and Morgan Mitchell with their post-apocalyptic game called ‘What’s Left?’
Steve Lodge, MD of Oxygen, a Tiverton based marketing communications agency and guest speaker and judge at the event, said: “It’s important that students this young get to see what business is all about, and at least start thinking about careers and their futures.
“Events like this give them exposure to a wide range of business skills, and I was heartened at how insightful and interesting their questions were. They really wanted to know more and applied themselves very creatively to developing their games. It was really valuable for us dragons too, to see the how well the future skills pool is shaping up first hand!”
