Creating new opportunities for young people

12 March 2013

(Image credit: CCSkills website)

Last week as part of CC Skills NSA annual industry conference, at the Backstage Centre in Purfleet, the Creative Employment Programme was launched by Matthew Hancock MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Education.

The overarching aim of the programme is to diversify the work force in the creative and cultural sector, and encourage a greater take up of apprenticeships and paid internships by young people and employers.

This is a great opportunity for the cultural sector to develop our employment practices and create new work opportunities for young people. Read more about this here.

The recession, increase in student tuition fees, cuts to EMA, reduced and ineffective careers advice and support, have further reinforced and exacerbated the inequalities that have always been prevalent in the arts and cultural industries.

We see the Creative Employment Programme as a welcome catalyst to address some of these issues and will be applying to lead a bid that will place 91 apprentices and paid interns over the next 2 years.

We are currently recruiting partner organisations to join us in the campaign to create real step change in how we recruit, support and employ young people.

We invite you to be part of this!

Our relationship with Job Centre Plus is funded through the flexible working grant and is productive and successful and has enabled A New Direction to develop trusted relationships with Job Advisors and area offices.

• We have a tried and tested recruitment strategy that includes briefings, pre-training workshops and interview preparation
  
• We have a dedicated team of two experienced professionals to work 1:1 with employers to develop job descriptions, roles and support the interview process
  
• We have a direct relationship with Job Centre Plus to broker new positions and source the right and eligible young people
  
• We have a dedicated support network of employers to share practice, advice and support
  
• We have a good understanding and knowledge of available apprenticeship courses (through colleges and training providers) that are relevant and useful for employers
  
• We have developed successful performance management process and evaluation strategies to support employers new to working with young people
  

Since 2011, we have placed over 150 young people in 8 week work experiences with organisations including Punchdrunk, Impact Ideas, Hip Hop Shakespeare, Bow Arts, the Whitechapel Gallery and Specialmoves amongst others.

We are working with unemployed young people who are residents of the Olympic Host Boroughs (Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest) in an effort to consolidate the focus that London 2012 Games generated.

Our aim is to create new opportunities for these local young people, though crucially employers can be based geographically across the capital.

If you are interested in joining A New Direction's network to take on an apprentice or a paid intern, please get in touch with Oliver Benjamin or Rachel Key providing the following information as soon as possible:

• An indication with what type of position(s) you are interested in creating (Apprentice or Intern) and in what area
  
• When you are interested in starting recruitment
  

We will be contacting employers directly over the next few weeks to move this forward.