A team from The Digital Gap and Studio 77 had a great couple of days filiming at two West Midlands foundries, Alucast Ltd, and Newby Foundries Group Ltd, as part of a wider pilot project aimed at encouraging more young people to consider a career in the castings industry (as part of the wider engineering and manufacturing sector).
The filming was to create a 360 degree ‘virtual tour’ of a foundry which can then be viewed by using a simple VR headset and taken into local schools and colleges to show children, college students and their teachers the range of roles that are on offer. The VR tour will be supported by some film clips of young people in the industry talking about their jobs and what they like about working in the casting industry, as well as a new website and careers leaflet.
“It’s not just about pouring metal,” explains Cast Metals Federation CEO Pam Murrell, “albeit that is important of course, but we also want to show that there are jobs in design and simulation, in 3D printing and CNC machining, in moulding, tooling and patternmaking, not to mention HR, sales & marketing and procurement.
“Our industry can offer interesting and exciting roles and is growing internationally – plus we use secondary materials (ie scrap metal) as our main raw ingredient, so the industry is an important part of the circular economy for metals - foundries were the original recyclers afterall,” she explained.
The wider schools engagement project, which is being delivered for the industry by Next Gen Makers and enabled by funding from the Foundry Training Trust and the Innovation Networks* (through Coventry University Enterprises Ltd with support from Midlands Engine and funding from the European Regional Development Fund) will also include a number of schools visits to try out the new resources from the autumn.
The 360 virtual tour will be used alongside the existing ‘Foundry in Box’ concept which enables young people to ‘have a go’ at making something in metal, whilst gaining a greater appreciation of casting as a route to manufacture and learning about how many of the things we use everyday are manufactured.
“We are conscious that our member companies sometimes struggle to attract new people into their businesses and find it hard to fill apprentice vacancies - the general public, including teachers and parents, may have the impression that the castings industry is old-fashioned and irrelevant”, continued Pam. “So our hope is that, by providing some additional resources to our businesses, they can start to build relationships with their local schools and colleges and go on to offer T-level placements and work experience which might help encourage young school leavers to consider apprenticeships in manufacturing and engineering. Companies that already have those local relationships are definitely at an advantage when it comes to filling vacancies and building their future talent pipeline.”