Featured Resources

The Office for Students has developed a new Graduate Employment and Skills Guide.

It brings together a range of advice and resources to help graduates think through their options. It sets out five steps:

Identify skills

Develop skills

Gain experience

Apply for jobs

Support wellbeing

At each step they signpost resources and opportunities to help graduates develop skills, gain experience and build networks in preparation for a graduate career.

You can find the guide on the OfS website

Funding

The Arts Council Funding Finder offers a searchable directory of other possible funding streams, many of which are suitable for individual artists.

Herefordshire Council Funding Update offers great guidance around local and national current opportunities

Careers within the Creative Industry
The Arts Council’s Arts Jobs site. This offers a searchable directory of arts jobs and opportunities which is frequently updated. You can also follow them on twitter @artsjobs A huge variety of opportunities and positions are listed.

Prospects career search facility. Also useful might be the Creative Skillset website, which supports creative business and talent.

Starting a small business
Prospects offers useful general advice on how to start a small business.

The government also offers a list of possible funding streams, including government-backed start-up loans and loans targeted at specific areas, like this one for the West Midlands.

Again closer to Herefordshire, the Marches Growth Hub offers advice on funding for start-ups, information about grants and awards and practical support (for example, if you are wanting to apply for a Princes Trust award). They have a comprehensive programme of networking events.

Self-employed?
GoCompare offers a self-employment guide to working for yourself.

Google Garage offers free online training in a range of useful skills, including digital marketing.

FutureLearn offers a range of online training in useful areas.

Creative Networks
New Arts West Midlands website offers a great way to catch up on creative news and opportunities across the West Midlands. It offers a wide range of information from funding news and exhibitions through to studio visit opportunities.

There are a range of local creative organisations, maker spaces and networks, including Hereford Make, Cup Ceramics, The Ford Collective, Meadow Arts and Apple store gallery.

Further study

Find out about doctoral loans (government funding) on the government’s website.

Funding for doctoral level study in the Arts and Humanities is generally made through the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Look at the AHRC website for more details. Alternatively, you can use specialist websites like ‘Find a Phd’ which currently show application windows open for arts and humanities doctorates from UAL and Loughborough, amongst others.

If you’ve graduated with a first or upper second class degree award and are considering further study it’s worth looking at this useful article from Prospects, the graduate career platform. Although not specific to arts graduates, it offers useful statistics about the value of further study and outlines some of the pros and cons of considering this route.

There’s a useful guide to all the different ways you might fund a Master’s Course, from government loans through to charitable funding streams on the ‘Find a Masters’ website.