Higher Education Creative Arts Schools are judged by many factors including their research outputs, their employability rates, and the relevance of their work to the industries and cultural organisations with which they form partnerships.

All of these, of course, are extremely important, but it is the quality of its graduating students work that remains the single most significant factor in defining the reputation of a creative School.

We are justifiably proud of our students' work. It excels in creativity, innovation and imagination. It shows an understanding and insight of artistic communities and their business contexts. It recognises both trends and fashion directions as well as the traditions that will always inspire the creative process. Moreover, the quality of our students' work is recognised by the professional worlds they will enter to launch successful careers.

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Students from Product Design, Film and Photography, Screen Academy Scotland, Interior Architecture and Creative Advertising are regular winners of prestigious National and International Awards.

As we go to press, The Guardian's University League Tables rate our School of Arts & Creative Industries as the foremost Media School in Scotland and the sixteenth most successful in the UK. In Art & Design we are rated second top in Scotland and seventh in the UK.

We collaborate with Edinburgh College of Art to form Screen Academy Scotland. This is one of only three Screen and Media Academies in the UK. We are one of only a handful of Schools in the UK to have been granted dual Broadcast Journalism Training Council accreditation for both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes. We are also professionally recognised by organisations including the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, IPA and Canon for Lens Media Practice.

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Another key indicator of the quality our students' work is its high employability rate. It is virtually impossible to network in Broadcasting, Film, Publishing, Journalism and Design in Scotland without meeting our alumni in leading creative and management roles.

The success of our students' work also reflects positively on the contribution of our staff, who work to establish a supportive creative community with students. Our staff ethos at all times foregrounds student practice that is content-driven, enterprising and kite-marked with the sure touch of individual vision.

I hope that you enjoy the range of events that take place this week, and I look forward to the opportunity to meet with you.

Anderson Strathern's continued support of Edinburgh Napier's Creative Showcase demonstrates our commitment to working in partnership with clients in education and the creative industries. We recognise that notwithstanding the troubled times this is an important opportunity to celebrate success at the early stage of the careers of students as they embark upon the next adventure in their commercial lives, and are very pleased to be able to do so with Edinburgh Napier University.