Museums SEND careers initiative brings home top national training prize

Established in 2019, Careers for All has worked with learners with SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) delivering careers workshops in schools, work taster days, career fairs and work experience all designed to support participants into work and bridge the gap between learning and earning.

Sessions see students work alongside museums experts, finding out more about the museums sector and the work undertaken through practical activities including site visits and object handling.

Since it began, Careers for All has delivered more than 140 hours of work experience to more than 40 students with additional needs, alongside more than 600 careers activities.

Carl Newbould, Leeds Museums and Galleries’ learning and access officer, accepted the award on behalf of the service.

He said: “This is an incredibly proud moment, not just for all of us in the museums service, but for the many talented and dedicated young adults we’ve worked alongside over the years.

“Supporting their passion and desire to learn has also given us the opportunity to benefit from their experiences of work and the barriers to it and in turn inform the way Leeds Museums and Galleries recruits so we can be more inclusive to disabled and neurodivergent applicants.

“The award is a real endorsement for the programme and will give us even more motivation to keep supporting the next generation of SEND museums professionals.”

In 2019 Mencap identified that the number of young people with a learning disability who are in sustained employment was at six per cent, with the potential for 70 per cent to be in work.

Evidence from the CEC (Careers and Enterprise Company) highlighted that a young person with four or more high-quality encounters with an employer is 86 per cent less likely to be unemployed or not in education or training.

Councillor Salma Arif, Leeds City Council’s executive member for economy, said: “We’re exceptionally proud of Careers for All and the important work they do making a real, tangible difference to the lives and careers of young adults looking to take their first steps into a job.

“This award is a huge endorsement of that work and I’d like to congratulate everyone involved on receiving such prestigious recognition and bringing yet another award home to Leeds.”

Leeds Museums and Galleries has won a number of top industry awards in recent years.

In 2023, experts from leading museums around Europe named Leeds Museums and Galleries the joint winner of the Children in Museums Award for the Leeds Curriculum.

In 2021 the innovative Closing the COVID Gap project won a prestigious Museums and Heritage Award for learning. The previous year, Careers for All was also named Museums and Heritage Award Learning Programme of the Year 2020. And in 2019, The Leeds Curriculum learning resource also won Educational Initiative of the Year.

For more details, please visit: Careers for all | Leeds Museums and Galleries | Days out and exhibitions

ENDS