Discover Creative Careers Month

The National Archives is on the steering group for the Discover Creative Careers programme, which provides young people aged 11 to 18 with knowledge and experience of creative and cultural careers. This year, the flagship Discover Creative Careers Week is becoming a whole month - November 2025 - to give employers more flexibility and to give the widest range of young people the chance to encounter the rewarding careers available to them.

Awareness of archive careers is particularly low among young people and we'd love your help in giving our sector more of a shoutout. Will you be working with a school in November anyway where you could talk about your job and inspire the next generation? Could you use Discover Creative Careers Month as an opportunity to build links with a new school?

Whatever you do during Discover Creative Careers Month doesn't need to be big. You could:

Tell your story about how you got into archives and what you do on a daily basis at the end of an education session
Visit a school to speak for 10 minutes at an assembly
Take a table of archival material to a school to inspire conversation about archive careers
Organise an online Q&A with a school class
Run a behind-the-scenes tour of your archive so that students can see what working at an archive involves

Please fill in the form below to register your interest or, if you can't take part this year, please still answer the questions to help us get a sense of the interactions that archives are already having with students in this age range. Thank you very much in advance!

If you have any questions, please email jonathan.ladd@nationalarchives.gov.uk

1. Name of archive service

2. Does your archive currently engage with young people aged 11 to 18 through schools in any way?

Yes
We used to but don't any more
We never have

3. If yes, how do you engage with schools and how often?

	Less than once a year	Once or twice a year	Once every two or three months	Roughly once a month	More than once a month
We visit schools in person	We visit schools in person Less than once a year	We visit schools in person Once or twice a year	We visit schools in person Once every two or three months	We visit schools in person Roughly once a month	We visit schools in person More than once a month
School groups visit us in person at the archive	School groups visit us in person at the archive Less than once a year	School groups visit us in person at the archive Once or twice a year	School groups visit us in person at the archive Once every two or three months	School groups visit us in person at the archive Roughly once a month	School groups visit us in person at the archive More than once a month
We run online sessions for schools	We run online sessions for schools Less than once a year	We run online sessions for schools Once or twice a year	We run online sessions for schools Once every two or three months	We run online sessions for schools Roughly once a month	We run online sessions for schools More than once a month
We create resources for schools to use independently	We create resources for schools to use independently Less than once a year	We create resources for schools to use independently Once or twice a year	We create resources for schools to use independently Once every two or three months	We create resources for schools to use independently Roughly once a month	We create resources for schools to use independently More than once a month

Other:

4. Would your archive be interested in running an in-person or online session for a school in November 2025 during Discover Creative Careers Month? If yes, please leave your contact details in the box below and we will be in touch.

Yes, we'd like to plan a new session with a school
Yes, we can adapt an existing session with a school to mention archive careers
Not this year

Name, job title and email address:

5. Would you find it useful to have a basic resource pack for running an 'Introduction to the archive / archive careers' session with schools? If so, what would you like to see in it?