Celebrating our work placement pilot
Less than 4 months ago we secured £3,400 of crowdfunding to deliver a pilot of our collaborative work placement scheme which provided six 18-24 year olds not in full-time education or employment with access to paid and flexible work experience within a community of freelancers and small businesses.
Today we are getting everyone that's been involved together at Works Social to celebrate the fantastic outcomes of the placements. Our ambition is to make this sort of scheme easily replicable for other communities to run something similar and reap the benefits.
But for now we want to celebrate the brilliant outcomes that we’ve heard about so far:
Shanai, Adell, Abi, Manny, Owen and Sonia chatting with each other and some of the businesses involved.
Outcomes for the young people
Manny, who introduced himself on our blog, secured a part-time job at the end of the scheme. Plus the scheme has helped him to pursue his passion for fitness by setting up as a self-employed personal trainer which will bolster his part-time income. He’s offering a free trial session to Works Social members in the New Year and we wanted to share the brilliant poster he designed with alongside Han, co-founder of Works Social.
Sonia shared her experience of the scheme here, plus she’s been busy applying for marketing or design jobs within the creative sector or with small businesses. She’s built up some great evidence of the projects she worked on as part of the scheme and has created one of the most professional looking CVs I’ve seen in a long time.
Shanai has been given the opportunity to take on some paid freelance video work for one of the businesses she worked with as part of the scheme. Plus she shared what she gained from working with Rach from Big Old House here.
Adell made a lot of connections as part of the scheme who can help her build up her ideas for her future business. She’s hoping to secure an internship at a London fashion company. She also bought a sewing machine and is going to start creating her own products.
Abi wants to run her own performance art event and working with Based on a True Story cinema boosted her confidence in being able to make this happen. Plus she’s now applying for project management jobs within the arts.
Owen went from having no portfolio or CV to applying for a Character Artist position at a local games development company thanks to the support of The Picture Whole and Skate Nottingham during his placement. He also launched his own instagram to promote his illustration work.
Some of the businesses and young people socialising over lunch together
Outcomes for the businesses
The businesses involved have talked about a whole variety of benefits they gained from being part of the scheme. From getting a fresh perspective on their brand to having hands on support with developing slide decks or building their social media profile.
As all of the businesses involved were either micro-businesses or freelancers many of them saw it as a great opportunity to professionalise their business. They discovered that the need to give the young person useful jobs to do meant they had to make time to do business planning together, which is something that can often fall by the wayside for business owners. Plus in some cases simply having to explain their business and the work they do to someone new gave many of them a boost and reinvigorated their passion.
Aside from the actual work the businesses and the young people did together it was amazing to see just how passionate they all were about mentoring and sharing their skills and connections with those on the placements.
You can read more from three of the businesses involved in the blog posts below:
A work placement scheme that builds the confidence of everyone involved - Lucinda, Dispace
Providing a mutually beneficial work placement - Natasha, Impact People and Change
Helping businesses gain new perspectives - Rosie, Organised Fun
Han, co-founder of Works Social, working with Manny to design a poster.
Other outcomes
It wasn't just those working directly together who shared skills, ideas and connections with one another. With everyone working from Works Social during the placements it meant that people connected with the wider group, as well as some of the Works Social members. Many of us found it useful just to be able to share our respective experiences of running a small business with one another, whilst others even gained new leads from the businesses we were working alongside. We'll share more about the importance of collaborating with Works Social to run this scheme in a later post but for now it's worth saying that having access to a shared space was invaluable to those involved in the project.
What next?
We would like to be able to run this project a few more times ourselves in Nottingham in order to test and learn about what works best and how to create an experience that is really transformational for both young people and businesse. We’ll then be looking at how we might collaborate to take the scheme nationwide. We're currently looking into possible funding we can apply for, or sponsorship we might be able to secure, in order to make this happen.
In the longer term we are aiming to operate a sustainable social enterprise model where any profits we generate are reinvested into doing more of this kind of work.
If you think you might be able to help out with funding or sponsorship, or if you want to hire Collaborative Future for some of the other People & Culture related work that we do with organisations (such as team development & coaching, facilitation training, or diversity & inclusion initiatives) please get in touch via tessa@collaborativefuture.co.uk
This pilot has been made possible thanks to the support of Works Social, Cleo, Armakuni, Tech Nottingham and s.p.o design. You can find out more about our crowdfunding campaign here and pledge to support future cohorts here.