Discover Month 2025: Learnings from last year’s creative employers
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If you wanted to inspire young people about a career in the creative industries, what would you want to show them?
In November 2024, swathes of creative employers across England got involved with Discover Creative Careers Week; a week of seismic activity demonstrating what a creative career looks like for 11-18-year-olds, and encouraging them to pursue creative pathways they might not otherwise have considered. Creative employers opened up their doors to students, visited schools to deliver talks and taster sessions, and even hosted full days of creative career experiences.
Before Discover’s national campaign returns – this time for the whole month of November 2025 – Creative UK connected with a couple of the amazing creative employers who took part last year to understand their approach, the impact of their involvement, and why we need initiatives like Discover Creative Careers.
Discover Creative Careers is an industry-led programme that is working to ensure there is a larger and more diverse intake of talent via a broader range of routes into the creative industries. It is funded by DCMS. If you’re a creative employer and want to get involved for 2025, register here.
Baggi
Baggi is a brand consultancy creating award-winning, effective work that draws businesses, consumers and communities together. Their expertise range from brand strategy to brand management, and they help brands with crucial building blocks like establishing a distinctive identity or getting their name out in the market in memorable ways.
For Discover Creative Careers Week 2024, the Baggi team ran a workshop for year 12 design/graphics students which featured a mixture of exercises that explored key areas in design and brand work, such as what makes an effective brand, how to approach and interrogate a brief, processes and roles within a creative agency, and a brand quiz. The students were also set a brief to tackle before presenting their ideas to the group.
What was a valuable take away from your involvement with Discover Creative Careers Week 2024?
We found the whole experience hugely energising – it was rewarding seeing the enthusiasm, creativity and approach of young people who one day could become the future of our sector. Additionally, the ability for young people to work collaboratively on projects and ideas – I think in recent years, partly as a result of the pandemic, this has been lost to a degree.
Since then, have the creative career experiences you facilitated for young people directly impacted your organisation in any way?
Yes, it’s given us renewed hope in the potential in the talent that’s coming through. But we all need to do more to inspire them to the creative sector, otherwise we’ll lose them to another sector altogether.
Initiatives like Discover are vital to changing perceptions around careers in the creative industries. What is one thing you hope changes for the future of creative skills and careers?
That it is still an important part of the curriculum and it is given the profile it deserves so Britain maintains its reputation globally in being a place that fosters class-leading creativity. But above all, for young people to feel empowered to pursue something they love doing.
SO Festival
SO Festival is Lincolnshire’s international outdoor arts festival that happens every year. Free for all who attend, the event celebrates art in its endless forms, from puppetry to theatre to immersive installations, and champions the work of creatives based locally, nationally and internationally. Outside of the festival, the team also work year-round to invest in and support creators and cultural organisations.
For Discover Creative Careers Week 2024, some of the SO Festival crew hosted a Creative Careers Day at The Embassy Theatre in Skegness. The event was attended by lots of industry professionals who showcased the wide range of careers within the creative industries, giving opportunity for students to network, ask questions, and build confidence in professional settings. The day ended with an open space session where students developed five-year plans to map out their creative careers.
What was a valuable take away from your involvement with Discover Creative Careers Week 2024?
Taking part in Discover Creative Careers Week 2024 was an invaluable experience. The biggest lesson for us was seeing the impact of giving young people direct access to industry professionals. Many students admitted they had thought of creative work only as a hobby. Hearing real-life stories and examples of paid opportunities helped them realise that creative careers are both achievable and sustainable. It confirmed to us that the most meaningful experiences are interactive, hands-on, and shaped around students’ own interests. Next year, our plan is to build on this by making the programme even more student-led, creative, and engaging.
Since then, have the creative career experiences you facilitated for young people directly impacted your organisation in any way?
Our involvement also gave us fresh perspective as an organisation. It strengthened our links with schools, students, and the wider community, while also highlighting the challenges schools face in supporting projects like this. Teachers are often stretched, underfunded, and carrying multiple responsibilities, which can make it difficult for them to keep initiatives like Discover at the top of their agenda. We understand these pressures and moving forward we want to design opportunities that are simple and supportive for schools, while still inspiring for students.
Initiatives like Discover are vital to changing perceptions around careers in the creative industries. What is one thing you hope changes for the future of creative skills and careers?
Looking ahead, our hope is to see creative careers recognised on equal footing with more traditional pathways. Too often creativity is seen as “something on the side,” but the truth is that the creative industries are thriving, diverse, and essential to our economy and culture. By showcasing real examples of paid work, hands-on career routes, and the variety of roles available, we can shift perceptions. Our goal is for young people to see their creativity not just as a hobby, but as a future they can confidently build.
