Programme overview
We have been awarded funding from the ‘Discover! Creative Careers’ programme to help the archive sector engage with schools in ‘Discover! Creative Careers Month’ (November 2025). We will award 8 grants of £1,600 to archives across England to enable them to engage with schools, potentially for the first time. Successful applicants will use their grants to speak briefly at a school assembly in November 2025 before running sessions for school groups at their archive any time between November and National Careers Week in early March 2026. You can choose how many school sessions you run but you must host at least 75 students aged 11 to 18 (for example, 3 classes of 25 students) at your archive in total.
Each session will need to include two parts. The first part will introduce the students to your archive’s collections and will complement the educational curriculum by showing how the information held in the archive can benefit the students’ studies (whether that is Key Stage 3, GCSE or A Level). Students will have the chance to handle real records during this part of the session. The second part will provide basic careers information, helping students understand the exciting roles available to them in the future. Students will visit behind the scenes to see your repositories and other spaces where staff work and students will be able to ask current staff questions about their careers.
The aims of these grants are to help archive services:
- develop their first educational sessions
- build longer-term relationships with schools
- inspire future generations to consider a career in archives
Programme context
‘Discover! Creative Careers’ exists to inform and inspire young people about careers in the creative and cultural industries. It aims to showcase careers unknown to many students and to explain what skills and qualifications they need to succeed in those careers when they leave school. With funding from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), the 2025 – 2026 programme aims to reach young 100,000 young people to encourage them to pursue a career in the creative and cultural industries.
The National Archives is a steering group member of the ‘Discover! Creative Careers’ programme and strongly supports the programme’s work to open up opportunities to a wider range of people. The archive workforce is currently not very diverse and does not represent the communities it serves. This programme is one of the various ways that we are working to break down barriers, dispel myths and diversify our workforce so that our sector can benefit from the widest range of ideas, perspectives, knowledge and skills.