With fresh enthusiasim and a keeness to learn and develop the School of Arts students have the creative flair and resilience to bring something special to your business whether that is with a Placement, Work Experience or Internship. We aim to support the placing of our students with opportunities that are of benefit to both the employer and the student.
There are four ways you can work with School of Arts students and these are broken down below and also detailed in our Opportunities Explained page as well.
- Placements for students on their placement year
- Work Experience for students still studying other modules at the same time
- Internships – for students between semesters and in holiday periods
- Live Projects or Project Based Learning within their programme and in negotiation with the academic teams. (refer to the LiveLab page for how these work).
Working with a School of Arts student on their Placement Year:
There are important things to note when working with students. As much as they are very capable people, let’s remember they are still in the learning mindset so will need guidance and support so expectation setting at the start of the process is extremely important. A student on a Placement as opposed to an Internship, has taken a year out of their studies to spend time in the industry but will be registered on a module and so will have assessment and learning outcomes related to their experience that they need to meet. So the level of challenge needs to be appropriate.
Responsibility: The role you give them should be of a suitable level so they can continue to grow and learn through their experience, it should challenge them. No one wants to go on Work Experience and only be given the photocopying to do. You can discuss this level of challenge with one of our team prior to advertising the role. It is important to consider if your business has the capacity to allow the student to work in different departments to learn the varying roles within your business. Do you have a plan for how the placement student can get the most out of their experience whilst also serving the needs of the business? Have you got appropriate resources for someone to mentor the student during their time with you?
Duration: Placements can be a minimum of 6 weeks and a maximum of 12 months. Students on our Placement Module can choose to break down their year into a range of different placements or work for one company for the full year. They will have a placement mentor to help them navigate those options. The hours must be full-time hours of 37.5 hours per week.
Remuneration: A placement student must be paid a salary commensurate with the placement role and not less than minimum wage for the country in which the placement is taking place. Students need to be given an employment contract (no zero hours) and be covered by the company’s insurance policy and health and safety regulations.
Person/Role Specification – information detailing the necessary skills, experience and attributes for the placement is required.
Benefits to you
Budgets – you gain an extremely capable employee while keeping your costs down.
Languages – many of our undergraduate students are international and so offer additional languages and cultural experiences.
Recruitment – a cost-effective form of graduate recruitment, as many students are employed by their work placement organisations when they graduate.
University – your organisation gains access to university resources and expertise.
Strategy – enhance your CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategy by providing work placements and boost your employer brand, particularly in the graduate market.
Offering an Arts student Work Experience:
A student looking for Work Experience as part of their academic studies will be expected to work a certain number of hours depending on which module and programme they are studying. These hours will be alongside studying their other modules for that academic year and so will not be expected to work full-time during term time.
Responsibility: As a Work Experience student the level of challenge needs to sufficiently high so they can demonstrate their capabilities to you and gain from their experience. However, depending on the number of hours they negotiate with you, this may mean they work on a project basis or support you with a particular part of your business that is in need of some specific expertise. Clear expectations should be laid out at the start of the Work Experience so that the student knows what is expected of them.
Duration: As this is Work Experience within a taught module the student will not be available to work full-time during term time. There is no minimum or maximum set hours for work experience and students will be responsible for fulfilling the required number of hours for their module which are approximately 48-80 hours depending on their programme.
Remuneration: We promote fair working for our students and so we would recommend that students are paid at least the living wage or minimum wage for the hours they complete. However, there is no government requirement for work experience hours to be paid so this will be down to the principles of the business and the context within which you are operating. If you are able to take on students as an employee then this is very much welcomed. However, we will support students with self-employment processes if you choose to pay the student as a freelancer through invoicing. The students will however need to demonstrate that the business has insurance and health and safety regulations if they will be working on site.
Person/role specification – information detailing the necessary skills, experience and attributes for the work experience is required so clear expectations are set at the start of the process. We can help you with outlining that specification if necessary.
Arts students and Internships:
Internships are a great way for students to try out new areas of the industry and to stretch their learning even more in all manner of roles and opportunities. Internships enable students to try something without the need for assessment and being enrolled on modules so it gives them the freedom to perhaps give something a go that sits outside of their studies but for which they have the skills and attributes. It’s about applying their learning in different contexts and using those transferable skills to get some really rich experience for their CV. They last normally for about 4 weeks to a year (the latter being mostly Graduate Internships). They can do them as a graduate, but for Graduate Internships we would expect them to receive some form of payment whether it is as an employee or on a freelance contract due to the fact they are now no longer students and are looking for permanent work. Graduate Internships should not be used to exploit the skills and abilities of our graduates to get cheap labour and you should demonstrate and acknowledge fair and ethical practices in this regard.
We require all third parties engaging with Brookes Creative to carefully read and agree to our Policy for Employers and Opportunity Providers.