since 2016
How do we make creative careers in Gloucestershire a viable pathway that is open to all?
Create Talent is about the pathways into creative work: from a child's earliest experiences of creativity at school, to a first step into the sector, to building a creative career at any age. We want more people to find their way into arts, culture and creative health, and for that workforce to reflect the communities of Gloucestershire.
Where it starts
For years we have helped young people find a way into creative work in Gloucestershire.
Through the Creative Employment Programme and Kickstart, we supported young people into placements, apprenticeships and first jobs across the county's arts organisations, with 60 young people placed across 23 organisations through Kickstart alone. Our Creative Steps hub gathered routes, resources and role models in one place, and Future Talent research set out what needs to change for the next generation of the arts and health workforce.
Where it’s growing
Today Create Talent is growing in two directions: opening up creative experiences and careers for young people, and helping build a more diverse creative and creative health workforce. This second thread is shared with Create Health, so that the people who work in creative health reflect the communities they serve.
Creative careers for young people
Helping young people discover creative work and take their first steps into it, building on Creative Steps and our work with schools, colleges and employers.
A more diverse creative workforce
Opening up routes into arts and creative health careers, so more people can build a future in them and the workforce reflects Gloucestershire. Shared with Create Health.
How this is part of the CG Mix
Like all our work, Create Talent grows from the CG Mix: equity of voice, curiosity and creative collaboration. In practice that means:
We start with the people most often shut out of creative careers, and keep asking who is missing.
We open up routes in, from first experiences to paid work.
We treat young people and communities as partners in shaping the work.
We share what we learn so others can widen access too.
Read more about our methodology.
So far
What’s next?
In neighbourhoods all across Gloucestershire, ideas for creative projects often exist long before the skills, contacts or confidence to turn them into something real. In 2025-26 Wyldwood partnered with us to test an embedded producing role with the Bream Dream alliance. It has been one of our first live tests of what closing that gap could look like, bringing professional skill and scale to local ideas while keeping the community in the lead.
This is the work of what we call a Community Producer: someone with a specialism in community-centred practice, who starts with an idea from a person or group and helps them make it happen. That support can look like mentoring, giving someone the tools and confidence to lead their own project, or it can mean hands-on project management and full-scale event production. It grows the confidence and ability of people who may never have run a project before, and changes who holds the power to make ideas happen. It's a distinct role from a Creative Catalyst, who helps a group come together, build relationships and test whether an idea is feasible. We’ve learned that the two need to work side by side.
Learning from this research is feeding directly into the next stage of our work: exploring what a Community Producer Collective could look like across Gloucestershire, and what it would take to grow community producing into a genuine creative career route for people who don't already have a way in.
