What is the Tick? - Interview with Noel Clarke

Want a career in Creative Media? BAFTA Winner Noel Clarke teams with Skillset to point media students in the right direction.

Noel Clarke is an actor. Today he is at Pinewood Studios, shooting a promotional film for the Skillset Tick Campaign. As he is running through the script, he hears a loud thud. The door swings open and in comes Noel Clarke, his double, mumbling his apologies and stumbling on the writer's chair that has been set for him. Both director and actor eye him furiously. “Right, he says as he goes through his papers, so the slogan is Pick The Tick”. “Pick the tick?” replies Noel Clarke, “so the tick is offering training and education?” The actor goes back to rehearsing his lines “Skillset is the industry body which supports skills and training for people in creative media – why', he interrupts, 'do we even need a tick?” Both writer and actor turn to Noel Clarke, who is directing the shoot, for advice. “The tick is an indication of quality, for the best higher education in media.” “Don't I put that across?” asks the Noel Clarke, the actor. “It's called The Tick Campaign” shouts Noel Clarke, from the director's chair. “Might as well get a talking tick then” replies the actor, to the production team's despair.

Confused? This is not a real shoot. Noel Clarke is a man of split personalities, and so has reality been split in the studio this morning. Surrounding the artificial set where Noel Clarke the director, Noel Clarke the writer and Noel Clarke the actor are all being played by one person, is the real filmmaking team, in the real warehouse at Pinewood Studios. They are shooting a video for Skillset, which is the Sector Skills Council for the Creative Media Industries, and Noel Clarke – the real Noel Clarke – has volunteered to represent the campaign. As a man who has acted, written, and directed for British film and television, the shoot reflects him well.

I am able to get an interview in the short break, but Clarke, who can only ever do three things at once, accords me this time whilst shaving, and whilst the make up artist is powdering his face. In the background, several runners and assistants rush in and out of the changing room, warning him that the shoot is about to resume without him. With no hint of haste, he tells me he had dropped out of his media course to pursue a career in acting, where he was landed with roles such as Mickey Smith in the BBC Wales 2006 re-launch of Doctor Who, and Ricky Smith, Mickey's double from a parallel universe – of which this latter “double” seems more suited to Clarke's character.

Later, Clarke took on the challenge of writing his first film, Kidulthood. “I felt essentially that I wasn't getting the parts I wanted to get, so I started writing them myself, and that's really how the film started.” This was a fast paced drama on teenage delinquency, centred around the students of a tough Ladbroke Grove state school. The film won him widespread recognition, for addressing the issue of London's underdog, in a style that broke away, as a Guardian critic wrote, from Richard Curtis' Notting Hill.

As a first time writer, he had not found it strange to see his work being performed and directed by others. Rather, he tells me, the making of Kidulthood served as the inspiration for his transition from writer to director: “At the time I had no designs on directing, but it was a good learning experience, I just watched and learnt.” In 2008, Clarke, made one final huge step and directed Adulthood, the sequel to Kidulthood, which one year later won him the BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award.

Clarke puts the electric razor down. He is not interested in telling me about his life, but rather about Skillset, who are campaigning to signpost the best pathways into the Creative Media Industries through education and training. Skillset is the Sector Skills Council – a body that represents the industry on skills issues – for the Creative Media. It works with the Creative Media and Education industries to make sure the sector gets the best trained people in the right jobs. Skillset's has accredited the UK's top courses in media for both undergraduate and post graduate courses, which it has signposted with the Skillset Tick. And that is the message of their new campaign - “Pick the Tick”.

“I left my media course to pursue acting, but friends of mine who came out with media degrees didn't really get into, and still don't have, any media jobs. I think Skillset can help facilitate that,” he says.

The Tick campaign stems from the need for media students to find degrees that are both theory and practice based. As numerous surveys have shown, employers, particularly in the Creative Media Industries, are not just looking for qualified graduates, but for those with skill and experience in the media fields they want to enter. Skillset, following the advice of employers in Creative Media disciplines, keeps a monitor of media courses around the UK, from animation to filmmaking and accredits such courses with The Tick as a mark of quality.

Did Clarke face such difficulties after university? “Well I never finished. I left” is his answer. He advises graduates to “Stick at it really. It's tough, you don't always have to focus on what you really want to do, but think about the various ways you can go and work towards them,” says the actor who, in trying to write his own parts, became an award-winning script writer. “There are so many jobs that you can actually do,” he says, getting up to rush out of the door, “and Skillset really helps you to find them.”