Editorial: Follow your dreams

Jack Keogh and Kereama Taepa will be speaking at Waiariki's "Inspire" event this week.

It's a career dilemma many will have faced, either at the start of their working life or somewhere along the way.

Do you choose to enter a safe, solid - but maybe uninspiring - industry with good salary and career prospects?

Or hold out for pursuing that secret dream - the thing that excites you and makes you want to get out of bed in the morning?

If the industry that excites you happens to have an abundance of well-paid jobs, fantastic. If not, the youthful determination to follow a talent or a dream anyway can all too often be grudgingly replaced by a 9-5 job that simply pays the mortgage.

Whether you call it selling out, or just being a grown up, it happens.

But this week, Waiariki Institute of Technology is hoping to show those with a talent for art, design, photography, fashion, music or film they can have it all.

Art teacher Kereama Taepa says there is still a stigma about the creative industry - "mainly that you can't make any money in it".

He says there is in fact a lot of potential to succeed in creative industries, especially in Rotorua.

Rather than discouraging young people from following their dreams, initiatives such as that on Friday are trying to give residents practical ways of using their creativity to not only bring beauty and joy to the world but to make money doing it.

The world will always need accountants, lawyers, secretaries and doctors.

Equally we need artists, fashion designers, photographers and film-makers.

It's great to see our local polytech recognising this.