"Many young people simply do not 'go' to the arts, so the onus is on the arts to come to them and meet them where they're at."
Overview
The rationale behind Stanley Arts’ involvement in Discover! Creative Careers Week 2024 was to utilise our core resource/offer (our historic building and the space it provides) to reach as many young people as possible.
We did not have a large enough in-house team to facilitate a full day of events in our main hall for a big group of young people - instead, our logic was to share out the hall with the many arts organisations in Croydon + South London to which we have previously partnered,
and offer them space within the hall to present their work and youth engagement programmes to invited schools/colleges/NEET groups and offer industry advice.
This meant that no one organisation was responsible for engaging with all young people present at once: we could all work with a team of 2-3 to engage with the groups that had been invited to participate.
In essence, this was a marketplace sort of event, where 8 organisations had their independent booths within the Stanley Hall, and a schedule was developed for young people to visit the hall and visit the stalls that were relevant and engaging for them.
Number of young people reached: 178
Advice for similar companies/organisations
Communicate your event prior to the summer holidays. Whilst this may seem like a very long period of notice, it is essential for many secondary schools to commit their resources to away days before the start of the new educational year. You might be leaving it too late if you
are only putting your event up on the website and advertising in September!
Can you tell us why you believe it’s important for industry to get directly involved in inspiring and informing young people about careers in the creative industries through projects like Discover?
Economic and cultural factors are frequently cited as reasons why young people do not consider careers in the arts: consciously or otherwise, many young people simply do not ‘go’ to the arts, so the onus is on the arts to come to them and meet them where they’re at.
Conversely, young people may enjoy the arts, but know very little about the realities of working in the industry - this might mean that they don’t consider a career in the arts because they don’t know where to start, or that when they do start into this career, they quickly become overwhelmed. We should be speaking in an honest and sincere way with young people about the realities of working so they can make informed decisions and take
care of themselves in this very changeable and educationally underserved set of industries.
You can find out more about this year's Creative Careers Fair here.