New toolkit to develop student work placements that benefit all involved
The 'Critical Work Placements' toolkit was launched on Thursday 9 October
Unpaid, unstructured work placements have long plagued the arts and creative industries, which can lead to individuals feeling exploited or failing to gain the sort of experience that would be beneficial to their future careers.
A new toolkit and website designed by Birkbeck academics and called Critical Work Placements was launched on Thursday 9 October. The toolkit will enable universities, arts organisations and students to design credited work placements which benefit all parties and avoid the types of pitfall which too often blight the experience. The toolkit was created by researchers Dr Sophie Hope and Dr Lorraine Lim from the School of Arts at Birkbeck, and takes into account the policy background to employability and work placements in the UK, as well as the realities of employment in the arts and creative industries.
The toolkit consists of guidelines and flow diagrams for each of the parties involved. It was developed in a workshop which brought together students, programme directors and arts organisations to learn from their experiences and to identify and build on examples of best practice.
Dr Sophie Hope said: “Setting up a credited work placement requires effort and time from all parties. The research which led to the Critical Work Placements toolkit identified some of the assumptions, communications problems and pressures which can lead to one or all parties being dissatisfied with the work placement. By entering a three-way ethical contract in line with the guidelines in the toolkit, we hope that students will gain relevant and appropriate experience, host organisations will benefit from the research being carried out by the student and universities will feel confident building high-quality credited placements into more of their arts courses.”
This research was funded by a British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grant.