Under the management of Rebecca Rovirosa, the establishment is ditching custom to coach scrappier, self-made creatives for an AI-fueled international. We in finding out extra as a part of The Drum’s Miami focal point.
For a faculty slightly out of its 20s, Miami Ad School has punched smartly above its weight. It has introduced international award-winners, fed the ranks of best companies and helped put Miami at the inventive map. But legacy most effective will get you to this point, particularly when AI, TikTok and generative the whole lot are knocking on the school room door.
Enter Rebecca Rovirosa. Just 3 months into her function as government director, she’s already dragging the curriculum into the chaos – and loving it.
“We’re not teaching traditional advertising any more,” she says. “Everybody is doing content curation.”
She’s talking from a uncooked, Bauhaus-style house in Wynwood – an area that smells like spray paint and ambition. And whilst the environment may well be all polished concrete and uncovered metal, Rovirosa is extra within the messy center. The stuff between the platforms and the pitch decks. The stuff that will get scholars employed – or makes them rent themselves.
“This is where we try to jump on this quick,” she says of the college’s new AI bootcamp. “We’re launching it this summer as a test – a pilot for what we’re going to develop going forward.”
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The bootcamp is greater than a novelty direction. It’s a part of a much broader pivot clear of discipline-specific coaching and towards the hybrid inventive – anyone who can direct, minimize, code and nonetheless get a hold of a half-decent line.
“A lot of what we’re talking about in this changing environment is giving students real experience,” she says. “We’re doing interviews with directors – asking them what they look for in content creators. It’s really for them to do it all.”
That comprises partnerships with native collectives like FilmGate Miami, which supplies scholars right kind manufacturing credit. “They do, like, two-hour blocks focused on shorts,” says Rovirosa. “We interviewed the director, the writers… It’s just to give students more experience.”
It’s a practical way and one who displays her personal trail during the type international, occasions and emblem enjoy. “I came from a place of trying to create community. I didn’t come from academia.”
So a ways, that’s operating in her want. She’s rebuilding the college now not as a nostalgic throwback to adland glory days, however as a launchpad for one thing scrappier – and in all probability extra a laugh.
“It’s like, we’re not the Ivy League,” she says, with a smile. “We are the punk rock school.”
That punk power is wanted. The pandemic wasn’t type to the establishment: scholar numbers dropped, campuses closed and the San Francisco outpost quietly vanished. But in 2023, the college used to be obtained by means of Groupe EDH, a personal French higher-ed workforce recognized for its media faculty EFAP. The deal gave Miami Ad School a extra international platform – and, crucially, the investment to do something positive about the long run.
And that long run, in step with Rovirosa, way getting proactive. “I always say, let’s just start. We’ll figure it out. We need to just make things happen.”
She needs scholars to ditch the concept luck comes from hiking anyone else’s ladder. “I want them to build their own opportunities,” she says. “If you can’t find a job, then create something. That’s the world now.”
Personal emblem? Pitching your self? Creating your personal lane? It’s all a part of the transient. “You don’t need someone to give you permission,” she says. “Just go.”
This isn’t about becoming a member of the inventive business’s outdated boys’ membership. It’s about blowing the doorways off and construction one thing new.
Welcome to Miami. No velvet ropes. No gatekeepers. Just a era of younger creatives made up our minds to make their very own good fortune.
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