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Kate Welch.jpeg

Manda Graham

The Curiosity Museum

Kate Welch.jpeg

Education

West Midlands

The Curiosity Museum is a fun, accessible, creative, and informative careers workshop which tours schools encouraging students to explore UK career pathways through an innovative, person-centred approach.

We work in school and education settings with 6 groups of up to 30 young people aged from 10+ in a day.

The programme is designed to be accessible for young people with barriers to learning and gives information on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) careers.

In 2016, in response to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Poverty Report and UK Social Mobility Index, the University of Worcester and National Collaborative Outreach programme commissioned us to engage with young people in Years 9-13 in low income areas to understand low attendance at the University.

Learning from the Education Endowment Foundation's literature review on the impact of non-cognitive skills on young people including those with barriers to learning and the UK Careers Strategy, we created The Curiosity Museum.

Developed over 3 years, we have used evaluation tools, user testing and iterative processes to refine our approach. Our programme learning aligns with the findings of nesta's (National Endowment of Science and the Arts) two recent future skill studies making the case for supporting life skills in young people.

Additionally, The Curiosity Museum supports schools in meeting the UK careers quality standards Gatsby Benchmarks 2 (Learning from career and labour market information) and 3 (Addressing the needs of each pupil).

In the Careers & Enterprise Company's State of the Nation Report October 2019 they highlight that of the 10 benchmarks, no. 2 is proving hardest for schools to achieve with just 20% reporting progress, demonstrating an urgent need for our programme in schools.

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