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Chief Executive
Here East

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	Gavin P – Here East
00:00	My name’s Gavin P, I’m the Chief Exec of Here East which is a major development on the Olympic Park.
00:05	Here East is recycling three buildings which were huge buildings built during the run up the Olympic Games to house over 20 thousand journalists to report the games back to their home countries and also to put in place the TV studios that were required to broadcast the Olympic Games, but this is the economic legacy. So this was a facility where we could create over 5 and a half thousand jobs by developing the space into a brand new campus with a University, a community college, an incubator space for start up companies, office space for companies of scale. TV studios, such as the one we’re sat in, BT Sport. Where people can come and gain employment.
00:45	So we see here a lot of digital media, content production, post production for companies coming here, putting that all together means you’ve got this unique environment for people to start companies so, which is why we have the enterprise element and the environment element so there’s a huge amount of opportunity and it comes in two forms. The first one is the construction works, there’s a been a lot of construction work across the park over the past 7 to 9 years, during the build up to the Games and now in the transformation phase. That will continue with us so we’ve got a lot of construction work we need to do over the next 2 years.
01:15	We’re working with Hackney Council to make sure that we have a Ways into work Officer embedded within our team, so we make sure we get in to the right places and the right colleges to make sure those offers of employment are really put out there far and wide and that’s just for the construction phase.
01:29	With Here East the opportunities around education in employment we see the Apprenticeship’s really important. I’m an ex-apprentice, I started my career as an apprentice so we place a lot of value in apprenticeships. So go back to the vision about the education aspect of it. One aspect of that is Hackney Community College opening a presence on site, where they will run their digital apprenticeship to start with and we’re looking at other forms of apprenticeship to come out of Hackney community college.
01:55	What do I look for in people who I want to work with, particularly young people. Confidence, self belief, being inquisitive, wanting to learn, not accepting the status quo, element of quirkiness and quite difficult to manage because that shows you they’re driven and they’re the interesting thing, that’s what we want to see, we want to see people who really can engage, can really question can really understand, but can learn, that’s the most important. So confidence to engage and to learn from others.
02:22	One interesting piece of advice I was given a number of years back was don’t think forward more than five years because you have no idea that it’s going to look like, which at the time when I was young I was like you must joking, I’m going to plan my life out, it’s going to look like this, I’m going to go and do college, I’m going to go and do this I’m going to do that, have a plan but accept 5 years out it’s going to look something completely different, which is why my career has been quite disruptive in what I’ve actually gone to do.
02:43	There’s many stories about young people just travelling many miles just to suddenly thrust a CV in someone’s hand to say, I’ve been trying to get hold of you, what about this, what about me and I think things like that are quite interesting, they’re the ones that sort of pop up and grab your attention. If you are just literally and it can be demoralising, I know I’ve been there, just throwing out CVs, throwing out CVs then, sometimes you need to have that little bit of spark and flare to put yourself above it and things such as social media, things such as you know getting off your backside and getting somewhere completely unexpected and knocking on the door, these are the things that make people sit up and go mmm there’s something different about you, I think that’s what we should be looking for, that’s what we should be encouraging.
03:27	My best advice I’d give to young people sometimes not the most palatable is, any work experience you can get, take it, any training courses you can see out there, take it, access to online services and online courses which are for free, take them, and just build that portfolio, build that CV and just show that you really are actively looking at self improvement and it comes down to that determination and drive and that’s really important.
03:51	End of Gavin P

Gavin began work as an apprentice and places a lot of value in the apprenticeship route.Here East is working very closely with Hackney Community College to provide more digital apprenticeships in the Olympic Park area. One of the best pieces of career advice he has been given is not to look forward more than five years as you have no idea what the future will look like.