Hidden Talent
Revealed

Digital Advantage is an award-winning charity* that delivers innovative work experiences to young people of all ages and abilities. Our industry-led programmes accelerate technical, creative and business skills to reveal the hidden talents of all our students. It’s innovative, engaging, effective and fun for learners, teachers and wider school community. Join the digital skills revolution now and gain new perspectives, unlock new career opportunities and form close ties between your organisation, young people, parents and industry.
*Charity number 1188836

Digital Advantage Videos

Just how do we reveal that talent?

There are 5 Digital Advantage programmes available, each designed to get the best out of young people.

DISC Supported Internship

Based in Central Manchester the Digital Inc. Specialist College (DISC) will be opening its doors to support young people with a flair for digital and creative technology to prepare for adulthood and employment. Over the course of one year, the group will develop their digital and creative work-based skills, improve their confidence and core employability traits and be supported into an apprenticeship, employment, self-employment or other positive destination in the digital economy.

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PopUp Digital Agency

Delivered over 30 hours across 5 days, the PopUp Digital Agency is our flagship experiential learning programme giving young people:

  • Experience of working in a realistic digital agency environment.
  • New creative thinking, problem solving, storytelling, business modelling, and digital production skills.
  • An opportunity to build digital assets that will provide ongoing work and enterprise experiences.
  • The a chance at winning a business start-up support package!

Digital Advantage Online

Digital Advantage Online is a series of digital skills workshops that can be delivered as part of our face-to-face training programmes, or more flexibly in shorter chunks to augment the national curriculum over longer periods of time.  Created by trusted expert practitioners these workshops will develop a range of entry level creative and digital skills whilst meeting a range of Gatsby benchmarks.  Digital Advantage Online currently has over 50 hours of learning in:

  • Branding
  • Photography
  • Videography
  • Website Design
  • Podcasting
  • Storytelling coming soon!
  • Social Media coming soon!

Your DNA

Your Digital News Agency is a new programme for schools, colleges and community groups and is designed to provide the skills you need to create great stories about the stuff that means lots to you. We provide all the skills you need to develop and tell stories from your community, develop your own or group website, whilst developing the skills you need to get work in the digital economy.

  • Industry professionals provide the step by step techniques of Storytelling, Photography and Videography through to Podcasting and Web Design.
  • Accompanied by workshops for teachers designed to help them manage the flow of stories from the agency.
  • Can be delivered in person or remotely.

Blast

Taking place across 4 days over a school term and with a focus on social good, Blast sees our industry standard training work with Year 5 and 6 primary age students working on a brief selected by, and important to, their school. With a focus on social good, students will develop a project under industry guidance which they then continue in school alongside expert mentors before launching their work to the wider school community.

Over 1000 young people reached.
So far...

You will currently find us working in Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Liverpool. Click on a location below to find out more about our work in each place...

"The teaching provided by DA was inspirational, differentiated and well informed. The trainer built a strong, professional and appropriate relationship with each student."

Paul Rogers: North Ridge High School

Keep up to date

If you have any news that you would like to share with us, get in touch and we'll tell your story. We also write articles for online publications, so to keep in touch with news and upcoming events, make sure you sign up to our blog and social media channels.

New funding for our outreach programme.

Much of the work DA do in Schools is not funded by the formal education system so we rely on the generous donations from Charities, Foundations, individual and corporate donors so that we can provide our inspirational training free to those who need it most. This year we are proud to have been chosen by
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Fran and Intern studying functional skills

DISC team – meet Fran

Introducing Fran, DISCs Pastoral Lead and Head of Functional Skills and one of our designated Safeguarding Officers. A secondary school teacher for many years. She joined the college at the start of the academic year and is working with our 10 Interns on their functional skills, and caring and supporting them all pastorally.  In addition
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Thomas and Caprice

Thomas’ visit

Fantastic for the interns and apprentices of DISC Digital Independent Specialist College to meet Thomas Shaw co-founder and CTO of https://auxcode.com last month at @digivantage. We love AuxCode OOD’s honesty, truthfulness and inclusive workplace ethos. Thomas is an inspirational individual. We love that he travels sustainably throughout Europe by bike and train helping young individuals
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422 Podcast Club

422

On the A6 Manchester Road in Longsight stands 422 https://422manchester.org/. A Manchester Vinyard project, restoring this magnificent building to create a warm and welcoming community hub, hosting an affordable cafe and kitchen, after school clubs, community pantry, free groups and space for hire for like minded groups and events and services to help alleviate poverty
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Dylan

Dylan Apprenticeship Story

Dylan originally joined the Digital Advantage as part of Digital Inc. internship in 2021. The course was transformational for him, building his digital skills, along with confidence and timekeeping. An asset to any company, Digital Advantage was keen to keep hold of Dylan and were delighted that the Co-op stepped forward to partially fund his
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DISC

Launch of DISC

Digital Advantage is proud to announce that DISC, the Digital Independent Specialist College in Manchester, has celebrated completing it’s first half term by welcoming ten new interns. They started their exciting journey in September, completing a four week induction, experimenting with digital photography, video, storyboarding, animation, graphics, scriptwriting, UX design, podcasting and web design. Be sure
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What are the press saying?

Thomas and Caprice

Thomas’ visit

Fantastic for the interns and apprentices of DISC Digital Independent Specialist College to meet Thomas Shaw co-founder and CTO of https://auxcode.com last month at @digivantage. We love AuxCode OOD’s honesty, truthfulness and inclusive workplace ethos. Thomas is an inspirational individual. We love that he travels sustainably throughout Europe by bike and train helping young individuals
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422 Podcast Club

422

On the A6 Manchester Road in Longsight stands 422 https://422manchester.org/. A Manchester Vinyard project, restoring this magnificent building to create a warm and welcoming community hub, hosting an affordable cafe and kitchen, after school clubs, community pantry, free groups and space for hire for like minded groups and events and services to help alleviate poverty
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DISC

Launch of DISC

Digital Advantage is proud to announce that DISC, the Digital Independent Specialist College in Manchester, has celebrated completing it’s first half term by welcoming ten new interns. They started their exciting journey in September, completing a four week induction, experimenting with digital photography, video, storyboarding, animation, graphics, scriptwriting, UX design, podcasting and web design. Be sure
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‘Pop-up’ digital agency gives 100s of Lancashire teens a taste for business

Classroom life – Walken High School

We have worked with Josh Mangas at Walkden High school for a number of years, taking Digital Advantage both into School and Salford College, where his students gained valuable work experience developing their own digital projects. In this article Joshua Mangas explains how working with industry is helping to change the fortune of disadvantaged young

BUILDING ON THE STRENGTH WITHIN

In August 2017 we worked with Sefton Borough Council to deliver our PopUp programme with a group of teenagers who were at risk of offending or non-school attendance. Children & Young People Now magazine featured the project in this months issue.

Digital Advantage is supported by

Coop Foundation

and supported by

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