Early Career Team
freelance artists
with barriers to employment

ExploreTheArch’s diverse early career artist team are supported in work roles to become career-ready for leadership posts in the creative, heritage and community arts sector.

The programme addresses a lack of study and work options in our sister towns of Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea that propels the majority of young adults to leave to study and work elsewhere. The diverse early career team are those who choose to forge a career in their home town.

Since the team were at primary school where they sometimes experienced being the only child of colour in their year group, student populations have quickly become more diverse. The early career team can be role models and authority figures in which children can find themselves reflected.

The programme is adapting to address financial cuts in the last decade that have negatively impacted equal opportunity practice in the workplace. We experience a lack of diversity in leadership teams in the town and percieve a reduction in the visible use of inclusion, diversity, equity and access frameworks in civic activity and work impacting communities. The diverse team identify as equality change-makers committed to addressing barriers to their generation accessing employment. Members of the early career team are recruited to the ExploreTheArch director team.

The scheme is long term, recognising that those who come to the programme have often experienced a lack of support, either falling between agencies or finding agencies have not supported them appropriately. It takes time to find balance and get on top of socio-economic challenges, gaps in education and experience of poor health and wellbeing. Hastings has the biggest population of temporarily housed people and those without homes in the South East outside London. Most young people earn below the national living wage. Lived experience of lack of stable living conditions, health challenges, navigation of neurodiverse conditions and intersectional experience are valued as insights important to bring to the programme and future work roles as leaders.

To qualify, mentees must have selected a freelance career in the cultural, heritage and community arts sector as the best fit to career aspirations and personal challenges.


History of the Scheme

The scheme was set up in pilot form in 2019 with SECCADS funding, two years after ExploreTheArch originated the annual A Town Explores A Book festival. Work offered was initially limited to festival output. The early career team are now fully integrated in all ExploreTheArch projects.


What the Scheme offers the Industry

In supporting early career artists who would otherwise struggle to forge a career in the cultural, heritage and community arts sector, ExploreTheArch is generating a future workforce of diverse practitioners, currently under-represented. Thus the scheme supports the long term health of the UK’s heritage, cultural and community arts industries. The outlook is international, the early career teem keen to engage with the world and shape the UK’s emerging identity post-Brexit.

We are grateful for any donations to the scheme. Thank you in advance.