Craftspace recently appointed Catherine Maguire as its first Creative Apprentice. Find out how they began, where to find help and how to get the best out of the programme.
Written by Deirdre Figueiredo, Director of Craftspace
Reasons for appointing a Creative Apprentice
The decision to appoint a Creative Apprentice was based on our strategic objectives around diversity, capacity building and our youth engagement programme.
In terms of diversifying an all-graduate team of staff, creative apprenticeships offered a vehicle to bring in someone whose post-18 career or learning pathway has been different. The age band for apprenticeships also provided the opportunity to target someone under-25, to add value to the range of perspectives and life experiences within the team.
Because we are a very small and busy team, we felt we needed someone who was very motivated and had sufficient relevant experience of the workplace to get them up and running in an office straight away:
- We pitched our salary higher than the minimum wage in order to attract the best possible applicants.
- It’s important to try and gauge how much someone is able to work on their own initiative and to consider how much, and what kind of support and mentoring your staff can offer.
- It’s best not to assume or take it for granted that applicants have even basic administration skills so a small task of some sort to test this at interview might be helpful.
Taking on a Creative Apprentice
As this was our first apprenticeship, we took the decision to only offer it for six months – with a possibility of extending to twelve – to see how it went. We had a good response to recruitment and appointed Catherine Maguire, 25, who gave up a job in a bank and took a drop in salary to take up a creative apprenticeship because that was the career she aspired to.
"The age band for apprenticeships provided the opportunity to target someone under-25, to add value to the range of life experiences within the team."
In fact, Catherine had come across Craftspace and participated in our Curious About Craft touring project which had gone into her neighbourhood. She had applied to be a volunteer but we hadn’t yet processed the request.
It was a happy coincidence that she had registered on the national creative apprenticeship website so the opportunity to be paid to learn on the job with Craftspace was ideal.
Catherine impressed us at interview with her motivation and drive. Having identified that she wanted to work in the arts, she sought out every opportunity to engage and was actively volunteering on several innovative arts projects in the city. Whilst she didn’t have specialist knowledge in contemporary craft, she made her own jewellery, had buckets of enthusiasm and was eager to learn and get stuck in.
Getting the most from a Creative Apprenticeship
The pressures of our programme and the need for extra capacity meant that we threw Catherine in at the deep end, requiring her to support artists’ interventions across different sites in Birmingham. She responded positively and has the personality to take things in her stride. She has shown leadership in helping to develop and inform our 16-25 Youth Craft Collective project, relating to peers in relevant ways.
If the apprentice does take up subsidised training requiring a paid day release it is worth keeping a track of what they are learning and whether it is good quality or not. Whilst they benefit from being a part of a cohort, if you are paying for their time then you need to see new skills being practised in the workplace or at least provide a structured way of embedding the learning through real application. For example a fund raising or writing a funding application module is fairly useless unless you have a go putting it into practice.
The flow of information and exchange is necessarily two-way. As a young person with a general, rather than specialist, interest in craft, we are keen to tap into Catherine’s experience, insights, knowledge & particularly peer networks. Her interests, the publications she reads, where she shops, the way she uses social networking etc. are all means of gathering intelligence. They are useful indicators for how we might position our activities within an increasingly diverse marketplace.
Support for a Creative Apprenticeship
Creative Alliance, the provider in the West Midlands assisted us in identifying the Community Arts Administration and Management apprenticeship as the most appropriate in relation to our audience engagement and participation work.
"Catherine impressed us with her motivation and drive. Having identified that she wanted to work in the arts, she sought out every opportunity to engage."
Being part of a national network, they are able to access government funding to train apprentices. They have access to a database of people for recruitment through a national on-line system. They can provide PAYE and HR functions for a reasonable fee but we had the means to administer these ourselves.
It was helpful to have their advice and support in thinking through an appropriate salary, hours of work, person specification, tailoring the job description, advertising, shortlisting and interviewing. The generic recruitment system is helpful in providing a certain amount of basic checking and filtering, for example for basic reading and writing skills.
If, as a prospective employer, you find the wide type and range of qualifications and grades for GCSEs and NVQs difficult to assess, then having the provider to make sense of it is easier and swifter. Creative Alliance assessed the learning needs of our creative apprentice to see what level of national qualification she should be aiming for and offered a six-month taught programme for one day a week resulting in a portfolio of evidence and an NVQ Level 3. Units included testing of literacy and numeracy.
About Craftspace
Craftspace is an independent organisation working to increase opportunities for makers, as well as access to and participation in contemporary crafts for all audiences. It is committed to touring, quality, innovation, and to the development, making and presentation of crafts in diverse cultural contexts.
It initiates programmes of work which stimulate artistic excellence, critical thinking, curiosity and understanding of contemporary crafts. It does this through touring exhibitions, socially engaged creative interventions, participatory projects, action research and consultancy.
You can follow Craftspace on Facebook, Flickr or Twitter.
Find out more about Creative Apprenticeships.
