To mark Discover! Creative Careers Week 2024 we're releasing a special bonus episode of the podcast. Listen below or via Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
School soundbite
Morning, Michael. Morning, Susanna. Morning. Morning, Rachel.
Host, Matthew Walsh
Hello and welcome to this special bonus edition of the ScreenSkills podcast, where we are handing over to the Discover! team to talk all things Creative Careers Week.
Host, Carley Bowman
So, ScreenSkills leads the delivery of the Discover! Creative Careers Programme, and it's a partnership of over 25 organisations that encourages and helps people, young people, between 11 and 18, to get into the creative industries.
So, tell us a bit more about what we've got coming up, Matthew.
Matthew Walsh
So, you'll be able to hear from some of those young people who took part in the events that ran throughout that week in November. We also spoke to Mary Rose to get an idea of just what is Discover! and the aims behind it.
Mary Rose
Hello, I'm Mary Rose. I am the programme lead of industry-led national programme, Discover! Creative Careers. Our lead delivery partner is ScreenSkills and we're really delighted to have been given this special episode to talk all about the programme.
Discover! Creative Careers is an industry-led national programme and it is designed to inform and inspire 11 to 18-year-olds across the country so that they feel better placed to be able to consider a creative industry career. I said it's industry-led; I think that's really important because we have a fantastic group of partners who come together to make sure that our resources and activities are directly aligned with their workforce needs so that we're finding a future talent pipeline from the broadest range of backgrounds, bringing in different perspectives and from different parts of the country.
Soundbite
My name's Paul. I work in the architecture field. I don't think there's any one route to studying architecture. I think there are lots of different routes. I studied history, art and design and English and that got me into architecture without having to do sciences or maths.
Soundbite
I did history, English and biology. So not really creative but the job I got first.
Soundbite
Yeah, it's really fun and then you get to be part of these meetings where people are pitching their films to try and get money to get these films that they've worked on for 10 years finally finished. It's a really magical part of the film industry.
Mary Rose
Discover! Creative Careers launched back in 2019 with Government funding from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and we've had additional funding from Arts Council England. The programme works across the country – there are 77 priority areas, which are those that are considered to face the greatest disadvantage in terms of encounters with the creative industries. And the programme is funded to give focused support to those areas.
It's a really broad and exciting offer. We work predominantly through teachers and careers professionals in mainstream schools to make sure that they feel empowered to inform their young people about the range of creative industry careers that are on offer and that it's not all about London. One of the things we're really focusing on increasingly as we move forward is about all the opportunities that there are in the regions and on people's doorstep.
Soundbite
I'm Hannah Williams and I'm a careers advisor across three secondary schools in Rotherham. I think it's important for students to be aware of different sectors that they can progress into but specifically creative sectors where they might not be aware of the kind of different job roles that are available to them. It's important for students to be aware of opportunities for them post-16 and post-18 and any in-school sessions are really good, you know, seeing documentaries made by local people. So it's really nice to see that local people, either from Rotherham, Barnsley, any of the South Yorkshire region can progress to really popular companies that people are aware of.
Mary Rose
Discover! Creative Careers Week happens annually in November. This year it's taking place across 18th to 22nd of November.
What happens is that we invite industry across the country to open their doors to young people for an encounter of the workplace and to learn about careers. That happens in a variety of ways. We are physically sending schools into workplaces so that they can take part in a tour or a workshop. We have a brilliant partnership with Speakers for Schools who run a virtual programme across the week and that makes sure that as many young people as possible can engage with the programme so that where they're located is not a barrier to them participating.
Soundbite
We just film a little bit, a few days, then go back home, see what we had, and then come back, film some more. Once you've filmed everything, then you sit with an editor and go through everything you filmed. I mean, I had no idea when I was 14 and 15 that it was even a job that you could do.
Soundbite
We're going to say a very big thank you to Omar. You can all wave to him. He can't see us because we haven't got camera but thank you. Thank you very much.
Mary Rose
We have everything from mentoring by window artists through to multi-site behind-the-scenes experiences with theatres. We've got immersive technology in Plymouth, to games design workshops in Darlington. And we're looking at archives in Wolverhampton. And there's a festival Creative Careers Day in Lincolnshire. And there's a lot of partner activities going on too. So the importance of Discover! Creative Careers Week as that key moment in the calendar is that we really recognise the importance, from our research, of young people directly engaging with industry, meeting them face to face. You've got to see it to be it.
Soundbite
Hi, I'm Ellie Beckett. I'm a teacher at UTC Sheffield. So the reason why we came today was basically for the kids to have an experience of networking, get to meet new people and experience talking to people in the industry that they might have never even spoken to before. They've really enjoyed it. I basically became unimportant as soon as I walked through the door! They were all mingling and chatting to everybody.
Soundbite
Hi, I'm William, I go to King Edward School and I've found today pretty interesting because I've managed to learn more about animation which I plan on doing post-school. I’ve learnt about freelancing and what I could do in terms of a company and what to generally do up until that. It's been quite a useful experience really.
Soundbite
Because I want to be an architect, I found out what kind of stuff I need to be doing and they said if you're not doing anything at the moment you can start doing volunteering, no matter how young you are. It's a really good thing because it will help you get ready. And then you need to do quite a few GCSEs and I found out what those needed to be so it was very useful for me.
Mary Rose
We’re just totting up the numbers, but we know that there were hundreds of events and potentially tens of thousands of young people who took part across the week. So, it's just seen an incredible growth and scale up. It's really extraordinary. A real moment for us was a new partnership with YouTube.
YouTube wanted us to think about key creative industries that would really chime with their audience. So, we had an exclusive screening and a launch of the programme's first film which was created for a young audience by art rock collective, Dilettante, who are Leeds based. They're from the north of England. And we launched a new dedicated YouTube channel and the event was held at TMP Creative College in Wigan with their students.
It is looking at the music industry through the lens of the artist, but really sort of busting open all the careers that support the artist as they lead up to a live event. We met their promoter, their manager, their sound engineer. You see them setting up and then playing a live gig and then you rewind to sort of see how it all got put together.
Please visit discovercreative.careers to find out more. It’s a really amazing website. We work with a huge steering group of industry partners. Lots of the information on there links out to our partners’ websites and their resources. It really is a single front door to find out everything about creative careers in its broadest sense. So, please go and visit that.
Registrations are now open for industry and schools and colleges to sign up for Discover! Creative Careers Week 2025, which will be happening in November. Please register now!
Matthew Walsh
Thank you all for listening to this special edition of the ScreenSkills Podcast. And thank you to the team at Discover! for all their help putting this together.
Carley Bowman
And don't forget, you can listen to the main ScreenSkills podcast. You can just search for it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts these days. You can also always reach out to us at podcast@screenskills.com.
Matthew Walsh
We'll be back shortly with episode three, where we discuss sustainability issues in screen and how to embed practices that help reduce productions’ carbon footprint.
Carley Bowman
Looking forward to that episode. Make sure you listen. We'll see you soon.
In November, ScreenSkills led the delivery of Discover! Creative Careers Week alongside its steering group of more than 25 organisations. Funded by DCMS and with additional funding from Arts Council England, the week saw hundreds of industry partners offer thousands of school children across England the chance to learn more about the breadth of sectors and range of roles that makes up the creative industries.
On this special bonus episode of the podcast we hand over to Mary Rose and the Discover! team to provide an overview of what the week entails, how it helps engage young audiences with creative industries and pick out some of the key activity that took place around the country.
Find out more
Watch the YouTube video made especially for DCC week
Discover more
Find out more about Discover! and get involved