Members of Birmingham’s marketing community have joined forces to launch B-Hive, a graduate scheme which will look to nurture the city’s next generation of creative talent.

The scheme is the brain child of Pitch Consultants with support from Marketing Birmingham and will try to showcase the best of Birmingham’s PR and design graduates.

Working in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, Aston University and Birmingham City University as well as Matthew Bolton College, the panel of marketing agencies has launched the competition among the students and class of 2008 graduates, who will be asked to present their entries in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ format.

The overall winners plus five ‘highly commended’ entrants in each of the PR and design categories will all be offered four weeks paid work experience this summer with one of the six agencies represented in each panel.

The overall winners will also be awarded an additional prize, which will be announced at the presentation evening being held in March.

Throughout February and March just 30 submissions will be short listed, made up of 15 entrants in each of the Public Relations and Design categories. Their entries will then be presented to the panel at Pitch Consultants’ offices and the winners will be announced at an evening event on Tuesday 24 March.