Campaign aims to boost recruitment of young creative talent

A new initiative is seeking to address the shortage of roles and sustainable pathways for young and emerging producers and creators.

The Creative Careers Commitment, which launched yesterday (20 April), is inviting cultural organisations to take part by pledging to create a new budget line to hire one young creative in a new project from budgetary stage.

The campaign has been developed by the National Producers Taskforce, a group of 40 organisations convened by Poet in the City featuring British Library, British Museum, National Theatre and Creative UK.

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The campaign is also recommending a set of principles to ensure fair recruitment and retention of young talent, including writing new roles into budgets, clearly communicating the recruitment of new roles and ensuring they are advertised diversely and paid fairly.

It has been derived to bring long-term structural change to the sector, in response to dwindling early career opportunities for young creatives which voices across the sector are concerned is limiting the talent pipeline.

Details on Poet in the City’s website says that job opportunities in the arts have disappeared faster than any other sector in the UK as a result of the pandemic, adding that organisations must work together to address the problem “at a time of such acute struggle for young people”.

Several organisations have already shared their commitment to their scheme online, including Royal Exchange Theatre, which, in a Twitter post noted that more than a quarter of creative workers under the age of 25 left creative occupations after the pandemic.

Poet in the City Trustee Charlotte Cole said opportunities in the cultural sector are “scarce”.

“Famously competitive, the few new roles, many of which are on voluntary, internship-based or zero-hours contracts, are some of the lowest paid across all industries. However, the experience requirements are high, so we asked ourselves how do we make sure we are equipping our industry with a broad range of talent for the future preservation of the arts?”

Cole added that by making a dependable financial commitment to the young workforce through core budgets would bring benefits to both parties, with more career opportunities available to young people, while broadening an organisation’s avenues to new talent.

“If 100 organisations were to add a budget line into future project budgets, 100 new jobs could be created,” Cole said.

Organisations can sign up for the Creative Careers Commitment pledge using an online form.