ASIA-PACIFIC – NEW ZEALAND, APRIL 2, 2013 – 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 stand on the corner of Halsey St and Madden St by 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.
