Saatchi & Saatchi partners with Media Design School

Press Release
For immediate release
26 March 2013

Saatchi & Saatchi partners with Media Design School on
Graduate School

The Media Design School has partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand to launch a new graduate school focusing on digital innovation, The Media Design Graduate School (The Graduate School), in Auckland.

The Graduate School has also been announced as an anchor tenant in the Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct, a mixed use living and working space currently being developed by Waterfront Auckland. The precinct is specifically designed to foster collaboration and entrepreneurship, and accelerate the growth of high-tech ideas into commercial success.

The Graduate School will take possession of its location on the corner of Halsey St and Madden St at the end of this year. The building will be re-skinned by renowned Auckland architects RTA Studio.

The school will offer a one-year full time Master of Interaction Design* from February 2014. Applications for the master's degree are expected to be open from June 2013.

The collaboration will see Saatchi & Saatchi actively engaging with students at The Graduate School including supporting student learning through live briefs, lectures and mentoring.

Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand CEO Nicky Bell says: “We believe that this collaboration will be hugely beneficial to both the next generation of our industry’s talent and to our agency.”

“Our Saatchi & Saatchi team are a spirited, talented and ambitious collective of people. We’ve actively broken down historical hierarchical structures in favour of a more open, collaborative environment, so the opportunity to expand our population of creative thinkers by partnering with the Media Design School makes perfect sense to us. We are excited to engage in the school and will certainly benefit from the ‘reverse mentoring’ this new generation of students will give us in return.”

Frances Valintine, CEO of the Media Design School, says: “We see Auckland as the creative capital of the Asia Pacific, so we felt it was an obvious choice for The Graduate School.”

“The Graduate School will be a dynamic physical space located here in the Innovation Precinct. The real magic will happen when we bring students together to study and research as a collective community, developing concepts that have both commercial and social value.”

“This collaboration will enrich our bright young talent’s learning through direct exposure to the dynamic folks at Saatchi & Saatchi and the perspective only an international curriculum can provide.”

The Media Design School is part of the Laureate International Universities network, and the curriculum programme for the Master of Interaction Design will be based on a similar programme offered by Laureate affiliate the Domus Academy in Milan.

Ends

*The degree is currently being assessed for approval by NZQA.

About Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand
Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand is part of the global Saatchi & Saatchi network, which includes 140 offices in 76 countries and over 6,500 staff. The world-renowned agency was founded in London in 1970 and is headquartered in New York.

Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand has been identified by global chief executive Kevin Roberts as having a special role within the network, similar to a global research and development lab. The office has a reputation for its industry-leading creativity, particularly in unleashing new ideas through innovative partnerships. Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand is headed by CEO Nicky Bell, Executive Creative Director, Antonio Navas and Director of Strategy, Murray Streets.

About Media Design School
Media Design School was an early pioneer in creative technology education, providing New Zealand’s first tertiary qualifications in ‘new media’ in 1998. Since inception, Media Design School has sought out intelligence, gained opinion, and embraced the potential of technology and how it could benefit media industries and the new generation working within them.

The school’s founding mission to be pioneering and future-focused has nurtured a bold education philosophy that inspires student creativity and innovation. This boundary-pushing culture has been supported by the integration of subject experts in new and emerging digital technologies, including advertising, interactive, film and design. Faculty and students are encouraged to facilitate and collaborate with designers and developers who are at the frontier of contemporary digital practices.

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