Following an event that brought 150 young people together with professionals from across the creative industries in Manchester, Be Broadcast and Working Options in Education are planning to bring Closing the Creative Class Gap to the East Midlands. Now we’re looking for people across the region who want to help.
Earlier this year, we brought 150 young people and professionals from across broadcasting, PR, communications, marketing, content creation and the wider creative industries together at MediaCity.
The idea was straightforward. Give young people the opportunity to meet people working in industries they might know very little about, hear how careers actually develop and make connections that could help them take their first steps.
Now we’re working with Working Options in Education and De Montfort University to bring that opportunity to young people in the East Midlands, with a proposed event on Thursday 26 November 2026.
And we’d love the region’s creative industries to get involved.
Why we’re doing it
Around half of people in Britain identify as working class, yet only around 16% of those working in the creative industries come from working-class backgrounds.
There are plenty of reasons for that gap, but one of the barriers we wanted to address was something that can be easily overlooked: knowing somebody who works in the industry.
If you’ve grown up around people working in media, marketing, broadcasting or communications, you might already have a reasonable understanding of the jobs available, what they involve and how to get started.
For plenty of young people, those industries can feel like another world.
You might know what a television presenter does, but have no idea about the researchers, producers, editors, camera operators, publicists and communications professionals working behind the scenes.
And if you’ve never met anybody doing those jobs, it’s much harder to imagine yourself doing them.
Bringing the industry into the room
We’re working towards an event that brings together school pupils, university students and professionals from across the East Midlands for an afternoon of conversations, practical advice and networking.
Working Options in Education will be helping schools get involved, while De Montfort University will be supporting student participation and the venue.
At Be Broadcast, we’ll be taking the lead on bringing people from the creative industries into the room and developing the speaker and panel programme.
We’re planning a mixture of industry speakers, panel discussions, practical sessions and opportunities for young people to meet people working in the sector.
Working Options will also lead an introduction to networking, helping young people understand how to approach professionals, what questions to ask and how to make the most of those conversations.
We want the afternoon to feel accessible, useful and genuinely welcoming, particularly for somebody who has never attended an industry event or spoken to a professional working in their chosen field.
We’re looking for people across the East Midlands
If you work in broadcasting, journalism, public relations, communications, marketing, advertising, design, production, digital media, content creation or another part of the creative industries, we’d love to hear from you.
We’re particularly interested in hearing from people who would be happy to join an industry panel, share their career experiences, offer practical advice or spend some time meeting young people and answering their questions.
You don’t need to be a CEO, have an impressive job title or have followed a particularly straightforward career path.
In fact, some of the most useful conversations at our Manchester event were about the jobs that didn’t work out, the applications that went nowhere, the mistakes people made and the unexpected opportunities that helped them find their way.
Those are the experiences young people rarely hear about when they’re being encouraged to think about their futures.
We’re also keen to hear from employers who can talk about apprenticeships, work experience, internships, entry-level opportunities and the different routes into their industries.
What happened in Manchester?
Our first event brought together 150 young people with professionals from across the creative industries, including people working at BBC North, Virgin Media O2, Alzheimer’s Society and a range of independent agencies and businesses.
We were joined by speakers including comedian Stephen Bailey, Advita Patel, Joel Mitchell, Chloe Rainford and others who shared their experiences of building careers, overcoming setbacks and finding opportunities.
Alongside the panel discussions, young people received practical careers advice, met professionals and learned about routes into industries they might never previously have considered.
For us, one of the most important parts of the afternoon was simply seeing young people have conversations with people they would probably never otherwise have met.
That’s what we want to recreate in the East Midlands.
Can you help us close the gap?
We’re currently developing the programme with Working Options in Education and De Montfort University, with Thursday 26 November 2026 our preferred date, subject to final confirmation.
We’re looking for people and organisations from across Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Northampton and the wider East Midlands who would be willing to give some of their time to support the event.
Whether you could speak on a panel, run a practical session, talk about your career or simply spend some time meeting young people, we’d love to start a conversation.
Interested in getting involved? Email josh@bebroadcast.co.uk with a little about what you do and how you’d like to help.
You might only be giving up an afternoon, but the conversation you have could introduce somebody to a career they didn’t know existed.
