New Year, New Apprenticeships

The last few months have been so bursting with news that I’m worried about not being able to fit it all in this newsletter.

The digital marketer and marketing assistant apprenticeships have now been replaced by a combined multi-channel marketer standard.

We are confident that this new entry level course will be a great addition to your apprenticeship options.

The ever-popular public relations & communications assistant & digital community manager apprenticeships have also received a refresh to make them even closely related to work tasks so do look out for them on our public services apprenticeships page.

Later we reveal first alumni events, apprentices competing to win donations to their favourite charity, recognition of apprentices’ achievements and lots of other good things.

Best wishes,

Richard Goodwin
Managing Director

To combine developing apprentices’ skills with generating social value, our new competition to nominate a 2024 Charity of the Year has gone live.

Every apprentice has been invited to submit a pitch for a charity of their choice. The pitch can be written, video or any other format which works for them.

There are three prizes, donations of: 1st £2,500, 2nd £1,500, 3rd £1,000.

Plus the winning charity will receive the proceeds of other JGA events.

WoooHoo! In November Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust’s PR & Comms alumna Emily, won the silver award for Outstanding Young Communicator at the North West PRide Awards (Chartered Institute of Public Relations).

As with so many of our PR & Comms apprentices, Emily also achieved Distinction in her apprenticeship – congratulations Emily.

Marketing apprentice Dylan Kelsall of charity Caudwell Children, won Future Star at the Your Heroes Awards and met lots of famous Stokies – well done Dylan!

Key to the developing the role of apprenticeships within education and training is creating valuable long term relationships with employers and apprentices.

Building on feedback, we are giving opportunities for current apprentices to mix with their predecessors and with JGA’s delivery team and to build their networks.

We were delighted to welcome 65 people to our first apprentice/alumni events. In London Hari Patience-Davies discussed Data Storytelling and in Manchester Martin Keelagher told us about AI and Automation.

Much fizz was drunk to celebrate the success of graduating apprentices. Watch out for more dates in the future.

One of JGA’s little secrets is that we worked with Screenskills UK to complete some TV apprentices.

The apprentices had placements with Sky, Amazon Prime, Banijay, Fremantle and Lime. Nearly all have achieved distinction – thank you coach Claire Ellis.

Look at what we spotted on prime time ITV – a credit for one of the apprentices, Bronte Pennells! Congratulations Bronte.

We are doing our best to live up to our prestigious 2023 AAC Award for Best Provider of Creative & Design Apprenticeships!

In November the House of Commons’ Apprenticeship & Early Careers Manager, Pippa Stanier-Moore, early adopter of JGA’s Policy Officer and Communications apprenticeships, explained the House’s apprenticeship strategy and results to JGA’s team.

Pippa was followed at our Team Forum Event by the Royal Opera House’s Guy Ellis (ex-event assistant apprentice), who told us how the apprenticeship has contributed to his career, enabling him to move from a low level job to a career in events within a prestigious institution.

Thank you Pippa and Guy.

✌🏽 Congratulations HR’s Nikki Curtis who has helped us to achieve the The Mayor’s Good Work Standard, accredited by the Living Wage Foundation and the Mayor of London. The rigorous process has taken several years and Nikki got us over the line. Lastly but by no means least, thank you to the whole JGA team, both employed and freelance. Without you we couldn’t make the good things happen. 

We are running a LinkedIn campaign featuring our delivery team. It focuses on how they are experienced in the function and definitely not dusty academics! So far we have achieved more than 400,000 impressions.

Would your apprentices like to join the likes of Disney (comms), Alzheimer’s Society and BBC (both marketing), Canon (bid coordination), Innocent Drinks, Lego or Sega (all digital community management)😊?

Many of our apprentices work within the public sector. Public sector comms and marketing tends to differ from the private sector equivalent and our apprenticeships take this into account.

Why not find out more about our comms, marketing, bid coordination and sales apprenticeships? Or check out our dedicated pages for voluntary sector apprenticeships and public sector communications and marketing.