Invitation to tender For Nations Expansion on behalf of Discover! Creative Careers

Discover! Creative Careers is a free to access, industry-led programme working across England to inspire and inform young people aged 11-18 and those supporting their careers decisions. Designed in collaboration with sector bodies and employers, it provides a single front door to creative industry careers information, advice and guidance including employer encounters, supporting schools and colleges to meet several Gatsby benchmarks. It aims to address key workforce challenges and opportunities through hybrid activity and resources that respond to the needs of the sector. 

Vision - A strong, inclusive and diverse creative industries workforce that is representative of the national population. 

Mission – To ensure every young person has access to the information, advice and guidance they need to consider a career in the creative industries, focusing on those facing the greatest disadvantage.  

Whilst the programme is open to all, we focus our support on schools and young people in 100 priority areas1 across England where young people are facing the greatest disadvantage and where there is also a proximity to creative industry hubs and opportunities.  

Since Discover! Creative Careers was relaunched in 2023, the programme has reached more than 62,000 young people via in-person and online activity and industry encounters. Several hundred employers have supported the programme, particularly across Discover! Creative Careers Week where industry open their doors to give young people an experience of the workplace. We have also had interest in Discover! Creative Careers Week and registrations from industry and schools outside of England, demonstrating a UK-wide appetite for the programme. 

The Autumn Budget 2024 confirmed the Government’s continuing commitment to broadening and diversifying the talent pipeline into the creative industries by providing additional funding to support the programme’s expansion in 2025-26. Our aim is to connect 100,000 young people with employers, both in person and online, and we are now seeking delivery partners to help us achieve this goal. 

We are looking to expand the current programme and to connect employers with young people across more areas of the UK, building on the programme’s reach and maximising its impact. To achieve this, we are seeking to recruit delivery partners in two nations to plan and deliver parallel Discover! programmes of activity running from late June 2025 to March 2026. We are looking for applicants to collaborate with who can enrich our nationwide offer and bring a distinctive flavour to their programming that reflects their nation and brings specific benefits to their own young people.  

We are seeking partners to design, deliver and monitor a complementary, industry-led and informed careers programme for young people, teachers and careers advisors in their nation. Whilst we expect these programmes to deliver in parallel to the English programme, there is the flexibility for partners to create new opportunities and ways of engaging young people. The English Discover! programme delivers activity throughout the year that showcases roles and opportunities across all subsectors of the creative industries.  

For the purposes of this project, the creative industries are broken down into the following categories: 

The programme is designed to meet the following Gatsby Benchmarks, the markers of good careers guidance in England:

For Scotland: 10,000 young people  

For Northern Ireland: 5,000 young people 

For Wales: 5,000 young people  

This is an open tender competition with two contracts available; one for each of the two nations selected. ScreenSkills welcomes applications from organisations or partnerships that have a proven track record of successful engagement projects with young people. We are open to delivery partners tendering for both nations, but the requirement is that one tender be submitted per nation.  We are looking for partners who can demonstrate a depth of knowledge about the careers landscape and creative and cultural industries presence in the nation they are tendering for and that have the necessary networks, resources and infrastructure to deliver this programme at pace across 2025-26. Partners will be selected for their ability to deliver the programme within the tight timeframes specified and for the added value they and their industry contacts can bring to the core programme. Applicants who are already delivering similar programmes and can expand their offer to include the scope outlined in this document are welcome to apply. We also welcome applications from organisations that are UK-wide but can demonstrate national specificity in their application. 

Applicants best suited to this project will have a working knowledge of; 

• Employer/industry-led career engagement initiatives across the creative industries 

• The needs and expectations of secondary schools and colleges when it comes to careers provision and employer engagement 

• Requirements relating to statutory careers guidance and relevant frameworks (such as Gatsby Benchmarks) in your nation 

• The creative industries including but not limited to film, museums and heritage, animation, music, theatre, advertising and architecture 

• Government policy relating to education and industry engagement 

Further details can be found in the assessment and evaluation criteria sections at the end of this document. 

The total budget for the tender is £200,000 - £225,000 per nation. However, costs will be a primary factor in our assessments of proposals, so ScreenSkills asks that any potential savings are factored into proposals.  

A full resource schedule including a breakdown of activities, time allocated and daily rate of each member of the project team, including their respective job titles, should be included as part of your fee proposal. An external independent audit will be required upon the completion of the project. The associated costs should be incorporated into the overall project budget.  

• Applicants are asked to provide the following: 

• A breakdown of costs associated with each element of the project;  

• Total figures inclusive of all costs (e.g. VAT and travel / accommodation);  

• Number of days spent working on the project;  

• The daily rate for each member of the project team; 

• A breakdown of translation and/or transcription costs, if required; 

• The cost of an external, independent financial audit  

Indicative payment milestones 

Payment will be set against agreed milestones and deliverables and on submission of periodic programme and financial updates and evidence of expenditure. 

• 1st July (upon signing of contract) - 10% 

• 1st September (for period July-Sep 25) - 25% 

• 1st December (for period Oct – Dec 25) - 25% 

• 2nd March (for period Jan – March 26) 25% 

• 31st March (final payment to be awarded following programme completion and final reporting) - 15% 

Applicants must be able to demonstrate: 

• Significant experience of operating similar programmes at scale and the infrastructure needed to establish and deliver the project at pace, including existing networks and resources and a recognised platform to direct schools and industry to, 

• A proven track record of engaging with schools and young people and a clear plan for engagement in priority areas,  

• Experience of recruiting and working with creative industry partners, and a thorough understanding of the sector in their nation,  

• A depth of knowledge about their nation’s careers landscape, including curriculum links, skills needs and education/career pathways – informed by their respective devolved administration’s skills and careers policy,  

• A robust methodology for selecting priority areas, 

• A system for monitoring engagement and capturing data that can be aligned with the English programme for reporting back to DCMS, 

• An identification of key risks arising through this project, and appropriate mitigation measures, including health and safety and safeguarding policies,   

• An understanding of the challenges around diversity facing the local creative industries workforce and how the project can help address these, 

• How their proposal offers value for money, 

• How many young people they plan to engage through different programme strands, presented as target figures and as a proportion of the population, 

• A commitment to diversity, including:  

• making reasonable adjustments to the offer (whether face-to-face or online) to make it accessible to a diverse audience – we will ask for evidence of your approach and implementation  

• having an equality policy in place as an employer 

• demonstrating how you plan to monitor and track the diversity of participants, and how this information will be stored 

The successful applicant/s will be expected to work with the overall programme evaluator to monitor and collect data for the whole programme evaluation. They will be contracted by DCMS, and in place by the signature of this contract. 

Please ensure you have provided all the relevant documents in the table below when submitting your response. 

Any questions or points of clarification from tenderers must be submitted electronically via email. Be advised that even after the closing date (e.g. after submission of tender materials), tenderers must still utilise email for communication.  

Please send your queries to 

Mary Rose: Programme Lead 

mary.rose@ScreenSkills.com