A toolkit for mapping young people’s career pathways: A preview

One of the key targeted outputs of this Fellowship is a toolkit for mapping the role of cultural engagements and information and communication practices in the formation of professional aspirations. Despite the difficulties with fieldwork posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, together with the V&A’s Young People Team we managed to get one step closer to this output by developing a first prototype of a workshop-based toolkit for mapping young people’s career pathways, specially designed to address young people interested to pursue creative careers.

This card-based toolkit is designed to be used in an interactive workshop format to assist young people to reflect on their career goals, the skills they possess and those they need to cultivate, and steps needed to take them to their career goal. Collaborative and reflective activities are embedded in the format, to enable young people to reflect on their interests, hobbies and aspirational activities that can inform or inspire their careers. Or, how they may have developed skills from informal activities, which can be useful in creative jobs.

The toolkit is based on the five profiles of young people interested in creative careers: the Selector, the Multifaceted creative, the Decided, the Switcher, the Explorer. (Read more about the profiles here).

As soon as conditions will allow it, we will test this toolkit with young people.

[Credits for graphic design: Holly L Hou]