The Challenger Academy Expands Flagship Youth Talent Programme

Creative industries educational charity, The Challenger Academy has the expanded its flagship youth talent initiative, The Biggest Pitch of the Year (formerly known as the Intercity Student Challenge), into Nottingham with confirmed participation from in-house agency specialists OLIVER.

A recent digital leadership report found that the dramatic surge in demand for AI skills has created the UK’s most severe and fastest-growing tech skills shortage in more than 15 years. The Challenger Academy was created by VCCP in 2021 with the ambition to tackle the UK advertising industry’s deepening diversity and talent pipeline crisis by providing meaningful, real-world creative experiences to young people from underrepresented communities.

Building on the success of The Challenger Academy’s Intercity Student Challenge in Stoke-on-Trent, the programme will relaunch this month - this time expanding to Nottingham. OLIVER, which has an office in Nottingham, have joined forces to deliver an eight-week crash course in advertising; providing students with mentorship from agency professionals across research, ideation, and campaign production. OLIVER will partner with Bilborough College in Nottingham to mentor their students. Meanwhile VCCP will collaborate once again with Stoke-on-Trent College, Stoke Sixth Form College, NSCG Newcastle and NSCG Stafford. students.

Since its launch, the Stoke-based Intercity Student Challenge has grown from working with one college to four, and in 2025 alone it engaged 262 students, worked with 17 global, national and local partners and delivered £1.6m economic benefit to the local economy in Stoke. The programme has now delivered close to 10,000 hours of creative education and work experience with 255 students taking part to date.

Students will respond to a brief co-developed with the charity Music Venue Trust, designed to engage them in real issues facing grassroots music venues in their communities. The programme will culminate in regional finals, where students will pitch their campaigns to a panel of agency and client judges, offering not just feedback but connections into the industry.

This year's programme will include digital and AI skills to improve social mobility and provide pathways to creative industry careers in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. The Challenger Academy has also partnered with Adobe to deliver training to students on Adobe Express, a powerful creative suite that includes Adobe Firefly, their cutting edge AI design tool. OLIVER will provide a live demonstration of Pencil - the Brandtech Group’s end-to-end gen AI marketing platform, which has now made more than five million ads.

​Michael Lee, chief strategy officer at VCCP and co-founder of The Challenger Academy said, “The Challenger Academy’s mission is to level the playing field for creative talent across the UK, ensuring that geography and background are not barriers to entering the industry. In the face of art college closures, reduced arts funding in schools, and widening opportunity gaps, The Biggest Pitch of the Year represents a bold, inclusive vision for the future of creative recruitment.

“Our goal was never to own this model - it was to build a blueprint that others can adopt. We’re inviting agencies from across the country to pick this up and make it their own. This is about collaboration, not competition. The industry faces a real risk of becoming a monoculture if we don’t act now. Creative talent exists everywhere, but opportunity doesn’t. The Biggest Pitch of the Year is our response - taking a tested model and scaling it to provide real pathways into our industry for the next generation.”

​Nick Myers, OLIVER's UK chief strategy officer said, "By focusing specifically on Gen AI skills, we're equipping young people who might otherwise be overlooked with highly marketable capabilities that are increasingly in demand across creative industries. This addresses both the social mobility challenge and the growing skills gap in advanced digital technologies."

The announcement comes amid growing concerns about the shrinking pool of diverse talent entering the creative industries. According to Arts Professional, socioeconomic diversity in the UK creative industries has declined sharply, with representation of individuals from working-class backgrounds falling from 26% in 2020 to just 19% in 2023.

The Challenger Academy plans to expand the programme to even more regions in 2026. The Challenger Academy is now calling on other creative agencies, brands, and local partners to join the movement, adopt the framework, and help build a broader, more representative talent pipeline for the UK’s world-leading creative sector.