The Biggest Pitch of the Year 2025/2026!

The Challenger Academy, a creative industries educational charity created by VCCP in 2021, has expanded its youth talent initiative with help from in-house specialist Oliver.

The initiative, called The Biggest Pitch of the Year (formerly the Intercity Student Challenge), will give students in Nottingham the chance to complete an eight-week crash course in advertising, covering research, ideation and campaign production.

Oliver, which is owned by Brandtech Group, will partner Bilborough College in Notthingham to deliver the course, while VCCP will continue to work with students from four colleges across Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle and Stafford.

Students will respond to a brief provided by the charity Music Venue Trust, designed to tackle the issues faced by grassroots music venues and culminating in regional finals, at which they will pitch campaigns to a panel of agency and client judges.

This year’s programme will also include digital and AI skills, including a partnership with Adobe to provide training on Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly, its AI design tool.

VCCP founded The Challenger Academy in Stoke four years ago to provide training and support to young people from underrepresented communities.

Michael Lee, chief strategy officer at VCCP and co-founder of the academy, said: “The Challenger Academy’s mission is to level the playing field for creative talent across the UK, ensuring that geography and background are not barriers to entering the industry. In the face of art college closures, reduced arts funding in schools, and widening opportunity gaps, The Biggest Pitch of the Year represents a bold, inclusive vision for the future of creative recruitment.

“Our goal was never to own this model – it was to build a blueprint that others can adopt. We’re inviting agencies from across the country to pick this up and make it their own. This is about collaboration, not competition. The industry faces a real risk of becoming a monoculture if we don’t act now. Creative talent exists everywhere, but opportunity doesn’t. The Biggest Pitch of the Year is our response; taking a tested model and scaling it to provide real pathways into our industry for the next generation.”

The academy plans to expand the programme to more regions in 2026 and is calling on agencies, brands and partners to become involved.

Nick Myers, Oliver's UK chief strategy officer, said: “By focusing specifically on gen AI skills, we're equipping young people who might otherwise be overlooked with highly marketable capabilities that are increasingly in demand across creative industries. This addresses both the social mobility challenge and the growing skills gap in advanced digital technologies.”