Creative Kickstart: a UK-wide job creation scheme to transform the lives of hundreds of young people and create paid employment within the Arts sector.
Posted: 05/07/2021
Creative & Cultural Skills has been confirmed by Department for
Work and Pensions as a gateway organisation for Kickstart and will be
supporting the cultural sector to create over 500 new jobs for
unemployed young people.
Creative & Cultural Skills (CCSkills) led a UK-wide, sector-wide,
Creative Kickstart bid in order to ringfence much-needed funding for
the sector to support the creation of hundreds of meaningful jobs for
unemployed young people, in line with their Best Practice Guidance.
As part of this bid, CCSkills has joined forces with myriad organisations across the cultural sector, including Artswork, Creative Society, Creative Scotland, Culture Counts, Curious Minds, Federation of Scottish Theatre, IVE, Skills Development Scotland, UK Music, Youth Music and The Factory Academy,
all sharing a common goal: to see a more diverse range of young people
progress into the sector and thrive in it for years to come.
It has now been confirmed that the application has been successful,
with DWP approving 568 placements so far. CCSkills has followed this
success with an ask for hundreds of more roles to be supported, that
have been identified since the original submission was made. They await
DWPs response to this.
Jane Ide, CEO of CCSkills, said, Whilst there are some employers who
may not have had their placements supported, we can certainly celebrate
that the approved placements will support hundreds of young people into
paid employment across the sector.
Under the leadership of CCSkills and its partners, Creative
Kickstart has the potential to transform the way the sector thinks about
recruitment by practically demonstrating to employers the benefits of
recruiting from a wider pool of talent, in turn supporting our sector at
a time when it most needs this. We hope Creative Kickstart will provoke
real and lasting positive change across our sector, at scale.
Kickstart is a job creation scheme by The Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP) that provides funding to employers to create six-month
job placements for 16-24 year olds currently receiving Universal Credit.
Funding covers 100% of the costs of a six-month placement, up to 25
hours a week, which can start anytime between now and 31 Dec 2021.
CCSkills has extensive experience of delivering similar job creation
initiatives, having successfully delivered the Creative Employment
Programme in England and Northern Ireland, and the ongoing Cultural
Ambition project in Wales.
Jane added, We believe in creating a fair and skilled cultural sector by shaping skills, education and employment best practice.
We know the sector will rebuild stronger post Covid, and we hope
Creative Kickstart will play an important role in helping our sector,
and the wider workforce, build back fairer and more inclusively
post-Covid.
To speak to CCSkills about Kickstart, please email kickstart@ccskills.org.uk
For more information, visit the website.
