The Stage

Plan to create up to 10,000 entry-level jobs in cultural industries

Published Tuesday 12 May 2009 at 16:35 by Alistair Smith

Culture secretary Andy Burnham and work and pensions secretary James Purnell have unveiled a scheme to create up to 10,000 entry-level jobs for young people looking to start work in the cultural industries.

The positions, which will be paid at least at National Minimum Wage, will primarily take the form of apprenticeships or on the job training for people aged between 18 to 24 who have been out of work for up to a year. Theatres and other arts institutions will be able to make applications to the Department of Work and Pensions for a slice of its £1.1 billion Future Jobs Fund, which was unveiled at the recent Budget. This fund was launched to provide cash to create 150,000 jobs across all sectors and the department of work and pensions has earmarked money so that between 5,000 and 10,000 of these can come from the cultural industries.

Launching the scheme this week, Purnell said: “It’s made very clear to you when you are made a minister in this department [the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, of which Purnell was formerly secretary of state] that basically your job is to get the money in. And I want to pay tribute to Andy for the completely ruthless way he has extracted this money from the DWP. If we get this right, this can be a bigger injection of money into the creative and sporting sectors than anything that was achieved in recent Comprehensive Spending Reviews.”

While full details of the scheme have yet to be decided, the first tranche of funding will be released to help create 200 jobs for young people working on music festivals across the UK this summer. It is expected that the scheme will roll out to other industries, such as theatre, later this year and in early 2010, although money will be allocated on a case by case basis as arts organisations bid for funding.

Purnell explained that the aim of the scheme was “recruiting a whole new generation of people, who will either go into these sectors professionally afterwards or be able to take the great skills that people are taught from these sectors into a whole other range of professions”.

Burnham, meanwhile, said that the initiative marked a “significant step forward” for the cultural industries, as they played “a bigger role in the life of the nation” and helped the UK move out of recession. He said: “This is all laying the foundations for the new economy… What we will certainly do is that rather than in times past when these worlds have been neglected as luxuries for the good times, we’re turning that thinking on its head and saying this department and these worlds are part of the core script, the main story.

“We’re deliberately going on the cautious side, but we think 5,000 jobs is very, very achievable,” Burnham told The Stage. “They’ve [the DWP] set a side a certain amount from their Future Jobs Fund, he [Purnell] has earmarked a part, so that he is ready to receive the bids and then when the bids come in, it will be apportioned.”