Creative & Cultural Skills feels that there is an urgent need to align this with the existing government targets for Apprenticeships, and this now looks possible, with subsidy available to support wages through the Future Jobs Fund, and the Learning and Skills Council continuing to support the cost of training. Creative & Cultural Skills is in a position, through its National Skills Academy, to develop a bid to take a coordinated, sectoral and national approach to ensure that all employers - large and small - can benefit in every part of the UK. Interested employers should contact engagement@ccskills.org.uk to express an interest.
Creative & Cultural Skills, again through its National Skills Academy, are also coordinating a strategic approach to Group Training Associations for Creative Apprenticeships. A Group Training Association (GTA) is a partnership of employers who will come together regionally to deliver aspects of the Apprenticeship training themselves, with specific funding attached. Creative & Cultural Skills is also calling for employer partners to join this bid to the new National Apprenticeship Service in England.
Tom Bewick, chief executive, Creative & Cultural Skills, said, "It is essential that we adopt a more joined-up, coherent approach, to how we equip nearly 70,000 creative and cultural organisations for the economic recovery. On my current tour around the UK, many cultural employers are saying to me that the present employment and skills system is too complex and there are sometimes conflicting policy messages and priorities.
"Often piecemeal initiatives are being pursued rather than a proper strategic approach. For that reason, we are throwing all our efforts and resources toward cementing the sector behind a single national bid - both in terms of accessing the Future Jobs Fund and supporting the roll out of Creative Apprenticeships. We are tasking our National Skills Academy with the remit to operationally deliver this more coherent and universal approach.
"I really don't think industry would forgive us if what emerged from the current bidding exercise was a patch-work quilt of highly localised or even inadequate sector-based schemes. I would like to encourage the whole sector to get behind the campaign now being taken forward by Creative & Cultural Skills and the NSA, on behalf of all the industries that we represent."
(Jim Evans)
