“The only constant in life is change,” stated the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. Arguing that the universe is in a state of perpetual flux, that is not chaotic or random, but a structured, lawful transformation, his choice of metaphor for articulating this ‘ordered change’ was the ‘ever-living fire’. The dawn of the AI era has accelerated the pace of change beyond any historical precedent. Its impact, arguably is, as profoundly life-altering as the human discovery of ‘fire’.
AI is not merely a tool, it is the primary driver of the ‘creator economy’, popularly known as the ‘orange economy’. As the creative industries move from the cultural margins to the global economic mainstream, India stands at the threshold of a content and careers revolution. For a sector with a projected value of $50 billion by 2029, is our education system prepared to empower the next generation of creators.
The traditional boundaries of innovation are expanding. We are moving beyond the classic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) model into a more diverse, inclusive and dynamic framework – Sports, Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Media – fuelled by the needs and opportunities in the orange economy. While technology retains its cornerstone role, a rapidly evolving ecosystem of digital-first platforms and AI driven tools is transforming how content is created and marketed at an individual level, through practiced entrepreneurship, in speeding the volume and velocity in creations. The scope of play, is a rapidly expanding media space from the traditional print, electronic and film, to digital, OTT, animation, visual effects, gaming, comics, and extended reality (AVGC-XR), along with sports played, consumed, and monetised.
India today, finds itself at a critical inflection point in this multi-media, AVGC-XR expansion, where the opportunity lies in transitioning from a back-office service provider to a global powerhouse of content creation, intellectual property (IP), and immersive technology, with a talent pool comprising of one of the largest youth work forces in the world. This talent can drive the transition, provided we shift from the existing narrow ‘skilling’ approach in our creative industries education, to a foundational shift in educational vision, that values and trains the individual as an enterprise. It requires shifting from a skill-only focus to an education model that prioritises inculcating mindset (to engage global markets), adaptability (to navigate rapid tech evolutions), and entrepreneurial agility (to become high-value innovators) to graduate from a culture of ‘producing and selling’ to one of ‘creating and networking/monetising’.
Creative industries include content creators, filmmakers, animators, VFX artists, artists, multi-media professionals. Traditionally, students had to gain skills in one of these disciplines and then hone it in a production house, media platform, and the like through short internships, before competing for campus placements in the final year with a portfolio of creations, following a – Skill Foundation Skill Immersion Skilled Production (Portfolio creation) Graduation model. For most students barring their brief industry internships, serious, immersive work in an industry set-up happened only after landing that post-graduation job offer. This approach has to change. A visionary blueprint is the need of the hour, where curriculum structures go beyond knowledge dissemination, to knowledge creation, curation and monetisation, within the existing four-semester (PG programmes) or four-year (UG programmes) learning-teaching cycles of academic programmes training for careers in the creative industries. Fort creative entrepreneurs to understand the full lifecycle of their craft and the dynamic nature of their industries, the passive ‘learning-to-do’ model has to be exchanged for an active ‘human-centric thinking-driven’ ecosystem, through the proposed four-pillar model: Foundation Production Immersion Curation.
- Foundation: Cultivating creative consciousness: The cornerstone of this new model for creative education lies in a foundational thinking phase aimed at building intellectual depth, before immersing into vocational instruction. Before getting into the ‘what and how to do’, students should start with ‘how to think’ about the ‘why of doing’ what they intend to do. By immersing students in human history, philosophy, the evolution of the arts and storytelling, the roots necessary for long-term passion in any creative pathway of choice is tested and inculcated. This phase ensures that creators don’t just get to learning a trade but also develop the cognitive adaptability of lifelong learners, who can then outpace or evolve with any technical shift in their industry.
- Production: The mastery of execution: In the ‘making phase,’ theory is transformed into high-stakes execution. Technical skill is applied not as an end in itself; but as a vehicle for creating signature work with some tangible market value. Whether in filmmaking, VFX, or multimedia, technical proficiency should be aligned towards discovering and nurturing a student’s unique creative voice. Here, the portfolio ceases to be a grade – it becomes a professional asset.
- Immersion: Bridging the market gap: The traditional ‘lag’ between graduation and industry entry should be eliminated by embedding real-world business literacy into the curriculum, focussing on the making and understanding of business. This industry awareness phase equips creators to view their work through a lens of global trends and multicultural appeal. By mastering distribution models and self-marketing, students learn how intellectual property (IP) moves through a digital-first ecosystem, ensuring that they understand how to reach their audience from day one.
- Curation: The individual as an enterprise: The final phase focuses on the ‘individual as an enterprise’ by understanding the professional ecosystem they are about to enter, through networking and entrepreneurship. This can be achieved by engaging in curated industry events to build professional relationships, learning to curate their own industry interaction spaces, and training in practical, day-to-day people engagement to bridge the gap between ‘just qualified’ and ‘truly hireable’. This moves beyond mere qualification to true hireability by training students in the art of people engagement and professional relationship building that enable a creator to build the networks and relationships that sustain a lifelong career.
To summarise, this proposed new four-pillar curriculum guide follows a logical progression from thinking, making, marketing to networking – foundation establishes one’s root consciousness for a calling; production drives execution towards merit through peer review; Immersion masters the bridge between creation and the market; and curation builds the influence and networks that secure one’s future career/s.
To thrive in the high-stakes orange economy, creative education must evolve into a ready and responsive ecosystem. By integrating business literacy and real-world working into the core curriculum of creative industries education, the gap is bridged between creation and commerce. We move beyond the classroom by complementing academic Capstone project outcomes (e.g. films, thesis, prototypes) with active Capstone experiences (such as film festivals, thematic events, industry networking showcases) that nudge students towards delivering tangible professional assets. Only then, can a new generation of ‘educated’ creators be launched, move from industry participants to industry drivers through the mastery of the individual as an enterprise.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Piyush Roy author, filmmaker, professor and dean, School of Film, Media & Creative Arts, RV University.