Careers for All, the Leeds Museums and Galleries programme supporting aspiring SEND museums professionals, has won Training Initiative of the Year (Public and Not for Profit) at the British Training Awards, one of the sector’s most prestigious accolades.
Established in 2019, the programme works with learners with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), delivering careers workshops in schools, work taster days, career fairs and work experience placements designed to bridge the gap between learning and earning. Sessions see students working alongside museums experts on 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.”
The programme addresses a well-documented gap: in 2019, Mencap found that only 6% of young people with a learning disability were in sustained employment, despite the potential for 70% to be in work. Separate evidence from the Careers and Enterprise Company found that a young person with four or more high-quality encounters with an employer is 86% 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.”
It’s the latest in a run of accolades for Leeds Museums and Galleries. In 2023, European museum experts named the service joint winner of the Children in Museums Award for the Leeds Curriculum; in 2021, its Closing the COVID Gap project won a Museums and Heritage Award for learning; and Careers for All itself was named Museums and Heritage Award Learning Programme of the Year in 2020, a year after the Leeds Curriculum won Educational Initiative of the Year in 2019.
