IVE awarded £9k by National Lottery’s Big Lottery Fund to deliver Shaping Creative Futures

IVE have been awarded £9,900 by the National Lottery’s Big Lottery Fund to deliver our Shaping Creative Futures project with young people in East Leeds.

Shaping Creative Futures, which will be delivered by IVE in partnership with Temple Newsam Learning Partnership Trust, will work with young people to develop their creative potential and build their awareness of the range of career opportunities available to them within the creative industries.

Leeds has a flourishing creative sector, as does Yorkshire and the UK more widely with creative industries such as film, design and gaming growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole. At the same time, the percentage of young people, particularly from BAME backgrounds and lower-income families, pursuing creative subjects at GCSE and A Level is in decline.

The UK is a creative leader in the world, and creative industries are facing a massive job shortage but the young people available to fill these roles aren’t aware of the potential careers available to them, or the routes into them. That’s what Shaping Creative Futures aims to fix.

Shaping Creative Futures will start with a careers roadshow, connecting the Leeds’ creative community with young people attending schools in the Temple Newsam Learning Partnership Trust. They’ll get a chance to experience first-hand the huge range of possibilities for work in the creative sector.

Selected participants will then be taken onto a programme that will build connections between young people and Leeds’ flourishing creative sector and will develop their creative skills, improve their confidence and increase their employability.

They will be introduced to the industry’s creative professionals via workplace visits and masterclasses and, with the support of a mentor, will get the opportunity to develop a career action plan that will create career routes into the creative and cultural workplace.

They’ll also get the chance to experience Leeds’ rich cultural life by attending plays, concerts, gigs and exhibitions that tie into their ambitions as well as creating a piece of work for exhibition in their chosen art form with the guidance of an industry professional.

By the end of the summer, these young people will realise, maybe for the first time, exactly what they’re capable of and how they can achieve that potential.

We’re really excited to deliver this programme, starting in summer 2018 and the first of what we plan to be several Shaping Creative Futures projects across Yorkshire. The project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the National Lottery Big Lottery Fund which funds projects and activities that make communities stronger and more vibrant, and that are led by the people who live in them.

We also need to thank Temple Newsam Learning Partnership Trust who are working together for the benefit of the community as a whole with ambitions to ensure that pupils and their families are supported to improve their life chances.

If you’re interested in working with IVE to support the creative potential of more young people, then please get in touch with us at hello@weareive.org . We’re always keen to work with creative organisations and funders that want to ensure that the future of the UK is creative.