Thank you for offering our young people a paid opportunity with you! These experiences are so important for our young people to build their knowledge of the industries they love, without financial barriers getting in the way. Unpaid opportunities have been part and parcel of the arts for decades and they are unfair to young people who are not in a position to take them up. Thank you for taking the steps to change that.
Pay
If you are offering us a paid opportunity, we ask that it is at least your area’s Living Wage or the average freelance rate for your industry. Consult the Living Wage website for their current rates.
Code of conduct
We ask that you read and agree to our code of conduct. This is to ensure that we know you will be treating our young people with the respect, care and dignity they deserve.
Internships
If you want to set up a bespoke paid internship programme with us, please get in touch with our Community Manager, Korantema.
Thinking about context
Fairness is about recognising that people, and especially the young people we work with, experience life differently. This means that it’s important to think about their achievements in context to their background. For example, a young person may not have had a careers adviser at school. They may not have been told how to write a CV. They might not be able to afford to take on an unpaid work placement. They might have caring responsibilities and therefore had no time to access opportunities. This means they may have no formal work experience but will have developed transferable skills another way. Because of this, CVs, cover letters and written applications are not always the best way to assess if someone is right for an opportunity. Alternatives might be asking for a short personal biography or for a portfolio of work.
What we will do
- We will advertise your opportunity in our newsletter which goes out to around 750 young people on the 1st of every month.
- We will ask young people to contact you directly if they are interested in the role. Depending on the opportunity you’re offering and the number of applications we receive, we can also send you a shortlist.
What we ask you to do
- You will need to give us at least three weeks notice to advertise your opportunity
- Send us your application guidelines, contact details and deadline.
- If we send you a shortlist of applicants, we recommend calling each person for 15 minutes and asking them questions such as:
- What’s something you’ve learnt recently?
- What’s something you’d like to learn?
- What’s something you’re proud of?
- What’s a good book/film/play you’ve seen recently and what did you like about it?
- If you were the writer/director/producer, what would you have done?
- When you’ve selected the person you want to work with, please email the young people who weren’t successful to let them know and copy Arts Emergency into any correspondence.
Examples
- Charlotte spent a month in Paris as an intern with Shakespeare & Company, a bookshop and events venue. Accommodation and flights were covered and she had a stipend of €400 for food and travel. The internship involved working in the bookshop and producing an event with spoken word performer and poet Kae Tempest.
- Five young people were given writing commissions by Boundless Theatre paid at £150 per piece.
- The National Film and TV School gave a place to a young person paid at London Living Wage to attend their six week immersive scriptwriting course.