Features • Walthamstow

A job centre for creative work

8 September, 2022 12:00 am
2 Min Read

With support from Civic Futures, the Echo reported on how tens of thousands of Covid recovery funding was spent in the borough
By Victoria Munro

Credit: Big Creative Academy
Credit: Big Creative Academy

A job centre at a Walthamstow arts college wants to help local people – young and old – break into the creative industries.

Big Creative Academy in Clifton Avenue is a free sixth form college that boasts singer Emeli Sandé as a patron and opened a new £21million building last year.

With the help of Covid recovery funding from the Greater London Authority, they set up a creative job centre and a “creative careers cluster” linking them and 11 other local schools.

The academy’s careers director Victoria Spence told the Echo: “The centre has been open since last January and we really want it to become a community asset.

“Right now it’s an advice and guidance centre more than anything else but we’re hoping to involve local businesses and hopefully make some magic happen matching people up.

“We also have an Instagram that collates all the arts opportunities each week, which makes it a lot easier for young people.”

In addition to funding a part-time staff member to run the centre, the money was used to develop a programme with Leyton Sixth Form to ensure arts departments across the cluster were teaching in a way that would best help students find jobs once they left education.

Victoria added: “The creative arts are becoming much more digital and also much more intersected. For example, a lot of dance students are going into motion capture work.

“There might be dance students assuming they graduate and be a dancer when there’s all sorts of other things they could do. We want to make sure we’re teaching the right things so they can get the jobs of the future.”

Find out more on their website here.

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