Beamish provided young people with hands-on experience in a live heritage environment, supporting day-to-day operations across exhibits.

“Helping to inspire the next generation of culture and heritage workers”
“Very Satisfied with the young people’s contribution”

Walk the Plank hosted young people across large-scale festivals, giving them experience in live event delivery and production roles.

“Significantly added value to their organisation by having the extra people onsite, it enabled the events to run more smoothly, and locals appreciated the fact that opportunities were being shared with young people.”

This placement created an accessible route into the games industry through hands-on ideation and collaboration with industry and education partners.

“This has been a great catalyser, and as always it would be lovely to see something longer term! From our perspective, the student support (travel bursary) is a needed aspect. We know young people locally struggle to access work experience because of travel, and that often can’t be covered by organisations. It would be interesting to see if future iterations of Next Gen might provide funding to cover freelance or small org delivery time. In our case, time commitment for delivery was partially covered by a staff member’s designated outreach hours, but without additional funding from our own organisation we would not have been able to bring in an industry professional (as gaming is often freelance).”

“We were proud to support an event that gave young people a practical and inspiring introduction to the games industry. The energy, creativity, and confidence shown by the students made it clear just how important hands-on experiences like this can be, and how valuable it is to connect education, industry, and local talent.”

“They were engaged from the moment they arrived, especially during the hands-on ideation activity where they developed their own game prototype concepts. We ended the day with four game prototypes and short pitches highlighting each team’s core idea, features, and value. The creativity these young people brought was incredible; it genuinely reassures us that our work with People in Games is well worth pursuing.”

Baby People supported young people to gain hands-on experience in live performance delivery, including technical setup, streaming, and production.

“The young people’s contribution was highly effective and helped them complete tasks that had been long awaiting due to capacity.”

Phizzical Productions provided experience on a live theatre production, supporting rehearsals and technical delivery.

“We were delighted to host the young people and explore connections between engineering and the arts. For future sessions, involving them in set design or sound engineering could help them apply their skills and engage even more with the creative work.”

Studio Giggle provided a placement where a young person created an animated advert, gaining direct industry experience.

“Blown away by her final storyboarded project. It was creative, beautifully designed and perfectly answered the demands of the brief. She was an incredibly hard worker, as well as a fast worker, without this affecting the output of her work.”

” She exceeded our expectations and was a real delight to have as part of our team! We would welcome her back whenever! We have no doubts that she will go far, whatever route she ends up taking.”