Hastings marketing agency calls on local employers to back T Level students

A Hastings creative agency is urging other businesses in the town to take on T Level students, as it opens its studio to the public this week to mark the start of a national campaign.

181st Street will host an open afternoon and evening reception at The Studio on St Andrew's Mews on Friday 16 October, ahead of T Level Week, which runs from 19 to 23 October and is organised by the Department for Education.

T Levels are two-year technical qualifications for 16 to 19 year olds, taken as an alternative to A levels. They combine classroom study with a substantial industry placement of 315 in a real workplace. East Sussex College had 432 students studying T Levels last year, in subjects including business, marketing and creative production.

The agency currently hosts four placements and recently ran a two-day bootcamp for the whole marketing class in behavioural science, advertising and campaign planning. It plans to take on ten more students from January, and has applied for Pride In Place funding that would allow it to grow the programme to up to 40 students a year.

While they're on placement at the agency, students work on live client briefs. Their work has included campaigns for luxury fashion brands and studio photoshoots, giving each of them a portfolio of real work they can take to future interviews.

Dr Andrew Lumsden-Groom, Managing Partner at 181st Street, who runs the agency's training programme, said local employers were the missing piece.

"Employers need young people to arrive on the job with practical skills and experience, not just academic knowledge. A placement is where those skills get built. Our students learn how to take a brief, work to a deadline and handle a client changing their mind on a Friday afternoon. You can't teach that in a classroom.”

He said the agency's involvement was not only about doing the right thing by young people.

"It's good for our business. We see talent early, we get fresh thinking from people who aren't yet trained to think the way the industry thinks, and we're building a pipeline into a sector that has spent years saying it can't find good people locally."

Hastings is one of the most deprived areas in the country, and around 8.9% of school leavers here finish education with no plan for what comes next. The town has fewer routes into well-paid work than most, and young people who want one often have to leave to find it.

Every placement is one young person who gets a reason to stay. They earn here, spend here and build careers here. A town that trains its own talent keeps it, and the businesses that do the training get first pick.

Friday's programme begins with a private lunchtime roundtable for businesses, educators and civic leaders. The open afternoon showcase runs from 2pm to 5pm, where students will present their work and talk about their ambitions. An evening reception, Our Town Has Ambition, follows from 5pm to 7pm, with refreshments provided.

"Come and meet them. Ask them what they can do, then think about whether your business has room for one of them next year," Lumsden-Groom said. "These young people are the workforce this town is going to need, and they're already here."