Why our creative graduates are unprepared for the world they’re entering

Read on The Post here.

Emily Makere Broadmore is the founder of Folly Literary Journal and the Wellington Writers’ Studio. She is also the managing director of Wellington-based communications agency Heft, that is supporting communicators and clients to upskill for the AI era.

OPINION: The Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s 2025 Long-Term Insights Briefing dropped yesterday, and explores how technology - especially AI - will reshape cultural storytelling in New Zealand. It acknowledges that generative AI is already changing how creative work is produced, shared and valued. It hints at the need for new roles, new skills, and potentially, new forms of education. But it doesn’t go far enough. And it doesn’t go fast enough.

For those of us working with emerging talent in Aotearoa’s creative sector, the impact of AI is not speculative or futuristic. It is present tense. Our young creatives are graduating into a workforce already split - between those who are using AI to innovate, and those who are still afraid to say the word out loud.

I was recently in Australia, speaking with creative sector leaders and business owners about how they’re adapting. When I asked one person whether they were using AI, the response was immediate: ‘Of course, we’d be mad not to.’ In New Zealand asking that same question is still met with hesitation. Silence. And often the sense that people aren’t brave enough to be honest about whether they are using it at all.

That’s not innovation culture. That’s fear culture.

Me, with two of my interns from Whitereia Publishing for 2025

And into that environment, we’re sending our next generation of editors, publishers, designers and humanities students- graduates who’ve spent years training for an industry that has already changed under their feet. One of my interns summed it up bluntly: ‘It’s extremes right now. Some jobs are being cut because of AI, and other sectors are still in the dark ages. It makes it a hard landscape to navigate when you're entering a workforce where the country is still so divided.’

My most recent publishing intern had never used AI tools like Cnava before, or explored how LLM’s like ChatGPT could speed up the vast quantity of marketing work in a publishing house. ‘This is a chance to learn,’ I told him. ‘You need to, if you want to be employable. Let’s go all in.’

To its credit, the LTIB raises the possibility of new pathways - apprenticeships, upskilling and policy settings to support creative resilience. But it speaks in a future, passive and conditional way, alluding to things that could happen. These things are already happening, and we need our leaders and governing bodies to have the courage to name them.

At my communications firm, we are designing junior roles that sit alongside AI systems -in collaboration with them. These roles focus on critical analysis, nuance and brand integrity – putting our young people into a role of gatekeepers and judges. We’ve started

rolling out workshops and training for leaders grappling with these issues, the majority of organisations have yet to even consider the impact on organisational design let alone how to support young people and graduates into a workforce which no longer needs them.

What we need now is national leadership. Specifically:

· A national level campaign on AI - one that normalises the use of these tools, addressing the national fear still present throughout New Zealand.

· Sector-wide guidance for educators to ensure AI literacy is a baseline. We want our graduates entering the workforce ready to interact impactfully with AI.

· Support for experimentation. Our creatives, and everyone really, need room to play, test, and shape these tools in ways that reflect Aotearoa’s values.

· Urgent consideration by leaders about how to integrate young people into the workforce in this post-AI era.

Reports and insights open the door to these conversations. But we are living the change, it’s here already. We need to support our young people, our creatives and our national workforce to walk through it - and quickly.

Because the future of creative work isn’t looming. It’s live. And if we’re not preparing our graduates to meet it, then we’re not preparing them at all.

Emily is the founder of Folly Literary Journal and the Wellington Writers’ Studio. She is also the Managing Director of Wellington based communications agency Heft that is supporting communicators and clients to upskill for the AI era.