Young people in Salford enjoyed building digital and employability skills as Career Connect and The Lowry Theatre collaborated once more.
Follow @connectmycareer
Discover Your Future, delivered by Career Connect Salford, is designed to help young people who are not in education, employment or training to build confidence while also gaining experience, in a friendly and supportive environment.
Career Connect delivers the programme each half term on behalf of Salford City Council’s Salford Employment Hub.
Meeting new people in smaller groups
The two-week programme is designed for young people who have expressed a preference to be in a small group, find it hard to travel independently, or may be socially isolated. The goals for some young people were to make friends, gain work experience, and build confidence.
Sessions included customer service and hospitality, and wellbeing and photography.
Work behind the scenes
The Lowry’s hospitality team provided the young people with an insight into what goes on behind the scenes to create a great experience for guests – including the chance to make mocktails.
Fraser Thomas, Youth Employability and Skills Manager for The Lowry, ran a session on confidence building, which included managing new situations, fight or flight response, assertiveness and personality types and strengths.
Young people also took part in a TikTok masterclass. They were challenged to capture images about their experience on the programme and what it’s like to work at or visit the Lowry.
Bespoke careers event
On the last day, the young people attended a bespoke careers event, where local organisations gave ten-minute talks on different opportunities available to them –including The Rio Ferdinand Foundation, The Princes Trust, YMCA Salford, Salford City College Apprenticeship team and The Growth Company.
As a result of Discover Your Future, a number of the young people have gone in to enrol on training and education programmes, summer programmes, and voluntary work to help build skills and experience – with one young person even securing Work Experience, and then a job, at the Lowry.
Young people share their experience of the programme
We asked our participants: ‘what have you enjoyed the most?’:
“Meeting new people.”
“Getting out of the house and doing new things.”
“The safety and comfort of the staff.”
“Getting to try different things like making a mocktail behind the bar and filming TikToks.”
“Meeting new people and doing things I haven’t done before.”
“The freedom.”
“Meeting new people, learning new stuff, and coming out of my comfort zone.”
Helen Rushworth, Team Leader at Career Connect Salford, said: “Our overall aim was to offer a fun and sociable experience which enabled young people to meet each other, make friendships, and gain peer support. It has been wonderful to see the young people come to the end of the programme with stronger social networks, more of an idea of what they want to do and feeling confident to apply for opportunities. We are also providing ongoing one-to-one support to a number of the young people as they continue on their journey.”
Fraser Thomas, Youth Employability and Skills Manager for The Lowry said: “It has been fantastic welcoming young people to The Lowry and collaborating with Career Connect to offer creative employability opportunities. I was impressed with how engaged and how well the young people interacted with the staff. Hopefully we have opened a couple of more avenues for them to explore. A couple of young people will be starting on a 10-week placement soon which is great! I look forward to our next collaboration soon.”
Abbie Thomson, from Salford City College Apprenticeship team said: “It was great to see the confidence grow within the young people – even though I only attended for one day I could see the young people coming out of their shell more and more. I even learnt a few things myself!”
Find out about previous Discover Your Future sessions on Manga art and wellbeing.
Visit Career Connect Salford’s Facebook, X and Instagram pages to stay up to date with the latest opportunities.
