Discover! Creative Careers Week 2024

Today marks the end of Discover! Creative Careers Week 2024, which is an industry-led programme that’s been running since 2018 with funding from DCMS and ACE. Discover Creative Careers aims to increase diversity in the creative industries by highlighting creative career opportunities to young people, as well as alternative routes into this industry.

To celebrate, Talent Accelerator have been busy attending various talks, careers days, workshops, and events to spread the word about what they do and encourage places of education to consider creative careers as an important career option for their pupils. Read below to hear about everything we’ve been up to this week to support young people in finding out more about the creative industries, as well as emphasising the value of hiring young people to creative organisations across Sussex.

Starting off the week by looking outwards at what others had posted, Talent Accelerator shared various Instagram stories about Discover! Creative Careers Week, including interviews with people discussing their roles in the creative industries and how they got there. One of the most important ways for getting young people interested in creative careers is to let them know what is out there, and how their skills and interests could land them a job. You have to see it to be it!

To kick off their outreach for the week, Kim and Maddie from the Talent Accelerator team worked with schools and colleges to spread awareness about Discover! Creative Careers Week. Working with local school Bexhill Academy, Maddie attended a careers fair there to talk with pupils from year 9 and 10. From telling young people how their options and college course choices would be pathways into the arts, to re-shaping thinking around what constitutes a creative career, a lot of the pupils left with a better understanding of what opportunities the creative sector has to offer them. Meanwhile, Kim hosted an afternoon event at Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. This event brought together college and school teachers and careers advisors across East Sussex to find out more about what Talent Accelerator does. They ended the day with a tour of the Towner’s art store to highlight the joy that the arts bring to people.

Here at the De La Warr Pavilion, our Learning & Engagement team have been offering Open Doors visits all week to local schools and colleges. With support from the wider De La Warr Pavilion team, pupils and teachers had guided tours of the gallery whilst also hearing about careers in marketing, technical teams, curation, and project management. Amy from team Talent Accelerator joined the Learning & Engagement on Thursday to discuss how young people can get involved in what we do, and to tell them a little more about working as a project manager in the arts.  We had visits from Mount Camphill, Bexhill College, Saxon Mount, and Ratton School.

With information sharing being a huge part of signposting young people into creative careers, Maddie attended the Youth Practitioners Network hosted by Rother Voluntary Action at De La Warr Pavilion to talk about Talent Accelerator’s work. This invited discussion and collaboration between the council, organisations and youth services all working with young people to consider how Bexhill, Hastings & Rother can become a better place for young people to live, work and thrive.

To round off the week, Kim and Maddie shared two presentations at the GoodSpace Communities of Practice event at Brighton Dome. Maddie spoke alongside fellow Artswork Breakthrough candidates Zac and Emma, who are also working on the Coastal Catalyst project collaboration between Talent Accelerator and Future Creators. They spoke about how to support and encourage young people in volunteering, based on their own experiences of volunteering as a young person. Kim followed by discussing how to get young people through the door, speaking at large about the success of Eastbourne Alive and Talent Accelerator’s work leading up to now. The day ended with neurodiversity and accessibility training from Neurodiversity UK, which gave great insight into ensuring your opportunities are workplaces are accessible for everyone.

If you want to know more about how you can support young people into creative careers, or if you’re a young person wondering what creative careers are out there, Discover! Creative Careers have a number of invaluable resources on their website.

Posted by Daisy Jerome on Monday 25 November 2024