As creative tools become more powerful and accessible, my goal is to empower the next generation to share their own stories and turn what's in their imagination into fully realised digital worlds.
How Ben Shelley left their lane.
Ben Shelley moved from university VFX teaching to The BRIT School – bringing real-time 3D tools into the classroom before students enter the industry.
Ben Shelley’s move was not out of creative technology, but further upstream.
After teaching VFX at Staffordshire University, he moved into school-level creative education at The BRIT School, where he now teaches Digital Arts. The aim is to give young people practical experience of the same tools and workflows reshaping games, animation, visual effects and digital storytelling.
That means moving well beyond traditional art-school software. BRIT students work with tools including Blender, Maya, Unreal Engine 5 and After Effects, building everything from game environments and animation to visual effects and interactive worlds.
Shelley has also been taking that access beyond his own classroom. In 2025, he worked with Croydon Council on a programme introducing young people to Unreal Engine and Blender as part of a wider push to create routes into gaming, animation and VFX.
And as the tools change, so does the teaching. His students have already experimented with generative AI alongside professional creatives, with Shelley arguing for both early access to new technology and transparency about how it is being used.
For Shelley, the important question is not simply what the next generation of creative tools can make.
It is who gets the chance to start making with them.
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