The Bottom Line: Apprenticeships Are Good for Business

  • Apprenticeship builds a pipeline of diverse, skilled, creative workers.

  • You make a positive return on investment (Construction and Health Care CEOs will testify).

  • Apprenticeships boost retention. Apprentices are hired from day one and more likely to stay on the job.

  • You will be an agent of change in the industry, walking the talk of inclusion and equity for all.

  • You gain workers with customized, state-of-the-art digital skills that keep your company relevant in the global marketplace.

“If you are not mentoring someone, you are not doing your job."
— Spike Lee

How to be an Arts2Work Employer

Becoming an Arts2Work Employer is a process that begins with training to ensure that your work environment is safe and positive for learning. You’ll also need to find a dedicated mentor that will be able to spend a significant amount of time training the apprentice.

1.

Connect with Arts2Work

Click "Hire an Apprentice" below, fill out the web form, and we’ll contact you. We'll walk you through the program, explain the benefits, and customize a training plan based on your needs. You'll sign an Employer Agreement, and Arts2Work will be there for you every step of the way.

2.

Introduce “Mentoring as a Practice” to Your Workplace Culture

With Arts2Work, you'll empower your senior producers, editors and creative executives to embed mentorship into their workflow. We'll provide an orientation and ongoing support to ensure that apprentice work environments are places where diverse staff members can learn, advance and thrive. Responsive mentorship and on-the-job training techniques will be key, including conscious inclusion, equity and power dynamics, sexual harassment, disability and creative leadership.

3.

Interview and Hire

Arts2Work can connect you with diverse and talented candidates, or you can identify eligible people you’d like to hire or promote from within. Once you hire an Apprentice, your company becomes part of the national Arts2Work network, eligible for available benefits like on-the-job learning grants and tax subsidies. Employers who hire Apprentices report that every $1 they invest in Apprenticeship returns $1.50. We like those numbers. Beyond being good for business, Arts2Work is just plain good. We’ve been under the shadow of #oscarssowhite and #metoo for way too long, and it is time to walk the talk of real change. Unpaid internships designed for people who can afford to work for free should be a thing of the past.

4.

Track Apprentice Progress

Your Arts2Work Apprentices come to work every day to learn and produce; you will find they soak up information and quickly begin to take on independent responsibilities and projects. When you hire an Arts2Work Apprentice, your mentors gain access to an app that streamlines tracking Apprentice progress on-the-job. Apprentices also take 150 hours of classroom and online training during their Apprenticeship year. We expect the company will pay for this, as they will be earning less than a senior producer or editor, and bringing back exciting new skills into your company – knowledge of the future of storytelling, new cameras and lenses, augmented and virtual reality, AI and machine learning, coding, design, advanced editing software, audio engineering, game development, and so much more. We will also work to identify grants to cover training costs if needed. At the end of the Apprenticeship, ideally, you promote your employee into the position for which they’ve been training.

5.

Become a Sustaining Arts2Work Company

Hire another Apprentice, contribute to the Arts2Work Accelerator Fund, ask your partners and clients to hire Arts2Work apprentices, host Arts2Work Employer Roundtables, and work with us to sponsor new creative job pathways for the future.

Employer Stories

Radical Apprenticeship: A New Model for the Future of Creative Work

Apprenticeship is not a new idea in the arts, but it is a new practice in the digital economy. We've created the very first federally-registered Apprenticeship prog ...

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Apprenticeships are thriving – just look at Chicago

In Chicago, employers in the trades, manufacturing and health care are reaping the benefits of a new pipeline of talented and diverse workers through apprenticeship ...

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Can BBC Apprenticeship Schemes be a model for PBS?

This promo was made by Apprentices at the BBC. Soon, Arts2Work Apprentices in the US will be telling their stories as well!

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Frequently Asked Questions

We already have an internship program. Why should we hire an Apprentice?

Don’t see your question?

If you have a specific question we haven’t covered here, please reach out and we will get back to you as soon as possible.