Creative Alliance’s Creative Apprentices will be staging a flash mob in the centre of Birmingham, culminating in a photo call outside the Hippodrome at 1.30pm this Monday 1st February. This will coincide with the visit of Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North.
Creative Alliance is supporting more Creative Apprenticeships than anywhere else in the country. 20% of the current national total is being delivered through the Birmingham based organisation. This is having a very real impact on helping to improve the lives of young people.
“Before the apprenticeship scheme I wasn’t doing much at all, I knew what I wanted to be doing but didn’t know how to go about it,” explained Daniel Newell from Yardley. It was a similar story for Kristina Grigate from Smethwick who has a succession of dead end part time jobs and for Melissa Harrison who said she was “wandering in a wasteland” at the start of last year.
These are three of the five pioneering apprentices have spent the last six months working for organisations including Trilby Multimedia, Women and Theatre and Wolverhampton Museum and Art Gallery and attending Creative Alliance one day a week. They have just successfully completed their level 2 apprenticeship in Community Arts – the first such awards in the West Midlands.
As Kristina explains, being a creative apprentice involves “learning all about administration and working in an office, project managing and assisting on outreach work, communicating with all sorts of different people. I’m getting to know what skills and knowledge you need to use in the creative industry.”
The next stage for these apprentices will be to move onto achieve their level 3 qualification. This will involve them co-ordinating an independent project on behalf of their employers. For Melissa this means managing her own project. “Every aspect of the work is a challenge but it shows me what goes into becoming a community arts manager and what I will need to fulfil this role in the future.”
For Sophie Green of Yardley Wood, another of the pioneering apprentices, she is hoping that the programme will give her “the opportunity to plan future projects and have the skills to run my own part-time dance school business.” Daniel plans to move into a freelance career in photography: documenting creative projects in schools, communities and for other creative companies. Kristina is thinking that in time “I’ll maybe create my own creative company,” and Melissa already has well established plans down that route.
19 further creative apprentices have registered with Creative Alliance and are now working with the whole range of creative and cultural employers across the region. This is more than any other organisation or Further Education College anywhere else in the country.
“We are delighted by the success of the Creative Apprentices in the West Midlands – congratulations to them! It is vital that we help young people break into the creative industries and the Creative Apprenticeship programme is a step towards ensuring they have the skills needed to join the creative workforce”’.
Tom Bewick, Group Chief Executive of Creative & Cultural Skills
The reason for this success is that employers in the sector are designing, developing and delivering the apprenticeship scheme to suit their needs and circumstances. It is Creative Alliance’s unique employer led model that is proving so successful.
“Employers are reporting that new talent entering the creative and cultural sector are not job ready. So we involve the employers in designing and delivering our apprenticeship programme. The employers know better than anyone else just what’s needed and they want to be involved – not just consulted. Our employer led Apprenticeship programme helps that new talent develop the essential ‘employability skills’ that are so necessary to employers so that people add value to our organisations as quickly as possible.”
Sandra Hall, Director of Creative Alliance
Fifteen of these apprenticeships will be supported by the Future Jobs Fund which is being distributed via Be Birmingham from the Department of Work and Pensions. The fund will cover the first 26 weeks of the apprentice salary at the minimum wage as long as the Future Jobs Fund paid employee is aged between 16 and 24 and have been unemployed for 10 months.
Two placements have already been allocated to arts organisation Ulfah Arts. Naz Koser, Director of Ulfah Arts, said, “The Future Job Funds initiative has enabled Ulfah Arts to hire two paid apprentices for six months, assisting the development and growth of our organisation. This timely assistance is especially welcome during the current recession, directly increasing productivity - public sector programmes like this are vital to the third sector”.
What Creative Alliance provides that employers say they really like, is a one stop shop approach to the programme. The organisation helps match the right talented young person to each individual organisation and then can either continue to employ the apprentice directly or provide advice and guidance on employing an apprentice. All the paperwork is taken care of by the organisation. They also organise the delivery of the training in consultation with the employers and support both the apprentices and employers to ensure the portfolios for the qualification are completed. As Jess Williams, general manager of Women and Theatre explains: “It’s a really easy scheme to be part of as Creative Alliance takes care of all the administration and coordination and we have benefited enormously from having an apprentice with us.”
And the last word goes to one of those young people for whom the Creative Apprenticeship scheme has had such a dramatic impact on their life:
“It is fantastic to be involved with a programme that is making a real difference to me: a year ago I’d never have imagined that one day I’d be learning the skills that on one day see me documenting creative work in schools and the next day taking photos at a video shoot in a stately home! It has given me the knowledge and understanding that I didn’t learn doing a two-year course at college.” Daniel Newell, Apprentice.
More info: http://www.frictionarts.com/news/