Community Innovation Fund

There is a wealth of evidence that the earlier children and young people are exposed to different types of careers, the more likely they are to have broader aspirations for their future selves and are less likely to avoid certain career routes based on stereotypes. Local stakeholders told us that the Norwich Opportunity Area (NOA) must work with parents and communities, as well as children, to inform aspirations and showcase successful role models.

The NOA worked with a range of local organisations to create innovative, local projects that facilitated conversations about skills and aspirations through activities and resources. A local project was agreed in 7 areas of the city with high levels of deprivation, as well as three larger scale projects across Norwich, aiming to increase conversations about careers. 

Working with Norwich City Council, the NOA set up a grant application process for any organisation keen to be involved. 

Organisations were invited to a showcase event to find out more detail about existing assets and issues in each local area and explore options for potentially partnering up with other organisations, submitting an Expression of Interest form with their ideas. 

Norwich City Council and the NOA provided feedback and invited organisations to submit formal grant applications, assessed by a panel of partner organisations. 

Once successful projects were agreed, the NOA supported organisations to set up links with local schools to promote individual projects and recruit participant pupils and their families. 

The NOA worked with a local digital marketing company, FLOCC, to create videos and marketing for the fromNorwich campaign to build awareness and excitement around careers and aspirations in Norwich. A case study has been written about this collaboration: Working With a Digital Marketing Company. Some of the videos created can be accessed in the resources section.

There are also other interesting case studies to look at relating to projects that focused on the primary World of Work (WOW) that can be accessed on this page. Primary WOW has its own Big Idea page: Primary World of Work Activities

Innovative community-based approaches to encouraging conversations about aspirations, skills and future plans are highly successful but need to be embedded within local organisations for messages to be continually shared with children and families, to encourage long term attitudinal change. 

Although disrupted by Covid-19, many of the individual projects reported significant positive feedback from participants and high participant numbers from both children and parents/carers. Sessions included exploring different sorts of job roles, understanding the skills and strengths of participants, thinking about what sorts of roles might exist in their community in the future and exploring gender stereotypes relating to work and careers. 

Attendance at events varied, for most projects engagement improved over time as those running the projects became familiar and trusted faces. Providers who weren’t already established locally in the communities they were running activities in struggled initially. In future we would give careful consideration to who within the community is best placed to share information with, or to work with, families. Projects based within schools, or working in close partnership with schools found it much easier to recruit participants in activities than community-based organisations. Offering hot food as part of sessions was always a winning strategy! 

Children who participated started having regular conversations with adults at home about different sorts of jobs and skills, their awareness of different types of job roles increased by at least 50% and confidence about having a job in the future and going to university increased.