Let Them Fly — with Jan Horn, SAE University College Dubai

Somewhere in your home there is a child who draws instead of revising. Who edits videos at midnight. Who builds worlds in a game and knows every sound in a film. And somewhere in you, quietly, sits the question you don't quite say out loud: is that a career, or is it a hobby that will cost my child their future?

If you've ever felt that — and I promise you, almost every parent I meet in this region has — this episode is for you.

My guest today is Jan Horn, Managing Director of SAE University College here in Dubai, part of SAE, one of the world's specialists in creative media education, where young people train in film, animation, game development, audio and design. But Jan didn't start there. He began his life in education as a teacher, and then a principal, in South Africa — nearly three decades of standing in front of real children, in real classrooms, watching what happens to a child when their gift is taken seriously, and what happens when it isn't.

He is one of the clearest voices in the Middle East on what's being called the creative economy. And he says something many of us in education have been slow to admit: that we have leaned so hard into STEM that we've quietly pushed the arts to the edge of the room — and told a whole generation of creative children that their talent is a lovely extra, rather than a living.

So we talked about all of it. Whether a creative path is genuinely safe. What the jobs actually are, here, in this region, right now. What parents get wrong when they steer a child toward medicine or engineering out of love and fear. Whether it's ever too early — or too late — to take a child's creative side seriously. And the moment every parent dreads: when your child's happiness and your own hopes for them don't point in the same direction.

Twenty minutes. No judgement, whichever camp you're in.

Let's let them fly.

https://www.heatherharries.com