Creative & Cultural Skills

Can you tell our readers a bit about what you do? 

Creative & Cultural Skills gives young people opportunities to work and learn in the creative industries. We are an independent charity that provides careers advice and guidance, promotes apprenticeships, and delivers activities for young people through our National Skills Academy network of industry and education supporters.

What is the best way for people to approach you?
Our email is info@ccskills.org.uk and we can also be contacted through social media on Twitter and Facebook 

What makes your organisation stand out? How do you make a difference to the sector?
We champion non-traditional progression routes into and through our workforce, including apprenticeships. We campaign for fair access and pay, working to eradicate the sector’s elitist recruitment practices. Through our National Skills Academy we deliver industry-relevant training and insights for young people to help inform future career choices.

What new initiatives do you have coming up?
We are currently working on a Cultural Ambition project funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and Welsh Government. It is aimed at helping young people in Wales who are not in education, employment or training, and who are not university graduates. Each young person will be working towards an NVQ 2 in Cultural Heritage while being based with cultural heritage partners across Wales.

We have also just launched the Creative Careers Programme, delivered in partnership with ScreenSkills and the Creative Industries Federation, to provide up-to-date information on the range of careers many young people have never even heard of and will train careers advisers about the pathways to those roles, helping a more diverse range of young people to take up the exciting opportunities available. The ambition is to reach more than 160,000 students through face-to-face encounters by 2020, with around two million young people accessing information online

We are also working with the education partners of the National Skills Academy on Make Art Not War, a creative collaboration for students in partnership with the 14-18 NOW centenary programme.

What else would you like our readers to know about you and your work?
We believe that diversity, equality, and fair access are crucial to the creative industries. The future of our sector depends on the way we recruit and nurture new and existing talent.