Highlights from our National Careers Week event at BAFTA

To mark the start of National Careers Week 2025 (3-8 March), we teamed up with BAFTA to hold a number of special careers panels at their headquarters in Piccadilly, London.

National Careers Week is hugely beneficial for schools and young people, and to help make sure we maximised the impact of this special event, we made an extra effort to invite schools from across the UK.

As well as providing a travel bursary to allow schools and teachers to attend, we were glad to welcome several schools and colleges from disadvantaged or under-served towns and regions, and were also delighted to have young people attending from specialist settings, including a post-16 college for young people with autism and SEND. The vast majority of the teachers and advisers who joined us were also working in these areas. 

The event consisted of two diverse careers panels, who spoke to a room of passionate young people about their careers and offered advice on how the next generation can follow in their footsteps. We also facilitated two very special acting spotlights, with BAFTA-winners Kit Young and Susan Wokoma providing further inspiration.

The panels were followed by a teacher encounter session, where a group of teachers and educators had the chance to take part in round-table discussions with our panellists, affording them unique insights into screen industry careers and professional guidance, helping them to better support their young people with careers advice in future.

Supporting with travel costs for schools to travel to London for the day allowed us to ensure our National Careers Week work had more of a UK-wide focus, with guests also joining us from Norwich, Gloucestershire, Doncaster, Manchester, South and West Yorkshire, and even Glasgow.

"We travelled from Glasgow at 5am to participate in the BAFTA careers event, and it was a phenomenal opportunity for my students", said Ross Gallacher, teacher of English and Media Studies at Hollybrook Academy, who was able to join us for the event. "As pupils with additional support needs, they worried that a career in the film and TV industry was impossible. Thanks to the practical advice from the guests, my pupils left feeling motivated and inspired. Thank you!"

The day was hosted by TV and radio presenter Lauren Layfield, and you can find out more about each of the incredible and inspiring sessions below, as well hearing some of the amazing advice that was given.

Acting Spotlight: Kit Young

The day began with an 'Acting Spotlight' session with Scottish BAFTA-winning actor Kit Young, who spoke about his career to date, which includes Netflix hit Shadow and Bone, and award-winning film Out of Darkness.

Having performed in several plays and a film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Young spoke about the works of Shakespeare and how they shouldn't be seen as off-putting for younger audiences.

"The stories are pretty universal", Young explained, "and they come back in loads of different ways. Like, The Lion King is just Hamlet, character for character. West Side Story is literally Romeo and Juliet, that's the point of it. And even shows today that are very much their own story have taken inspiration from Shakespeare - Succession really feels like King Lear at the start, given it's about a man who's surrendering his legacy and trying to choose between his children. So I think whether you're using the text or not, these stories feel really satisfying to know, because they're all really obviously about something."

And for those who find the original texts difficult to digest, Young's advice was aligned with our own - to approach the work in another format. "When I read a Shakespeare play, I couldn't process it. But then we went on a school trip to watch the play, and something registered. Shakespeare is definitely worth studying as a literary thing, but first and foremost it is a play. So you should probably experience it in the way it was intended."

Careers Panel One

The morning panel featured Rebecca Wolff, a producer for Grasp the Nettle films; Malachi James, an animator and storyboard artist; and Nathaniel Daw, audio and narrative director for Fuse Games.

While our primary focus is always on the medium of film, the screen industries also includes the world of gaming, an intersection perfectly encapsulated by the latest film Wolff has produced, Grand Theft Hamlet, which follows an ambitious attempt to stage a production of Shakespeare's play entirely within the world of a Grand Theft Auto game.

"The crossover between theatre and games is a lot stronger than a lot of people realise", explained Fuse Games' Nat Daw, "because there's an interactivity to it. With film and TV it's more passive - you're watching something that's presented as done - but the live aspect of theatre has a lot in common with games". Daw started out as a Programmer, but had always had a love of music, and began doing music for the games he worked on at university and ultimately fell deeper into that role. "It was always my hobbies of gaming and music, playing in orchestras and bands, that really drew me to it. So my hobbies very strongly influenced what I ended up doing."

Meanwhile animator James spoke about his passion for traditional hand-drawn animation, and how he was able to turn that into a career. "I really like traditional animation, I like doing frame-by-frame drawing", said James. "But I realised there aren't that many jobs doing traditional animation, so I thought ‘Well I love drawing, and visual storytelling comes natural to me', and when I was at uni I did the storyboarding for group projects... so I figured I'd go into storyboarding! I built up my portfolio and one thing led to another". Just another example of how, whatever a young person's passion or skillset, there is a potential career for them in the screen industries.

Acting Spotlight: Susan Wokoma

Actor, writer and director Susan Wokoma has appeared in films such as Enola Holmes, The Beautiful Game, Half of a Yellow Sun and The Inbetweeners Movie 2. Her television credits include: Cheaters, Crazyhead, and Chewing Gum.

As an actor, Wokoma spoke about how performance, and having the confidence to stand up and speak in front of other people, can be a key skill in other areas. "Performance is a really good skill", she explained "even if you don't become a performer. When you want to make a show or make a film as a writer, you have to pitch your show, and I know brilliant writers who are really afraid of public speaking. But because I have that skill, I can go in and pitch a show, or I can go in and pitch a film."

Another key 'soft skill' that Wokoma highlighted was that of curiosity. "I have a natural curiosity for the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, which has definitely helped with becoming a director, when you've got to put together a team. I know the camera operators that I really love, I know the gaffers who are really good, because I've been nosy for a really long time."

She also spoke about how and why she has expanded her career beyond acting, into the world of writing and directing. "Sometimes you have to be the change that you want to see, and I love my job, but it is, at times, limiting. Especially as a woman, especially as a woman who is getting older, especially as a black woman. And, I think you can only go out with the begging bowl for so long. So, what are the stories I want to see? What do I think is missing?"

We know that young people have countless unique stories of their own to tell, and putting them to film can be one of the most gratifying and accessible ways to have their voices heard.

Careers Panel Two

The afternoon panel featured Beth Park, a filmmaker and performance director at Pitstop Games; production and costume designer Paix Robinson; and director and designer at Aardman, Gavin Strange.

Speaking about their routes into the industry, the panel were keen to emphasise that one of the key aspects is simply trying different things. "You don't have to be an absolute professional in exactly that thing you want a job in - everyone comes to it in such different ways", explained Strange. "Pursue all the things that make you happy and make you excited".

"Professionally, I've done so much", continued Robinson. "I was a dancer, I was a model, I was a painter in a gallery… I tried so many different forms of creative expression. And now working in film, as a designer, I'm using all of those things. Down to the ones that don't even make sense, like dancing - but the understanding of the body and expressing yourself with your limbs completely resonates with being a costume designer. I'm able to understand the human form in a way that most people would just look at the topical, whereas I'm using the emotional and the spiritual as well, because I've used my body as a form of expression, so therefore I can use fabric and textiles as a layer of expression on top of that."

"I think I was fundamentally a weird kid", admitted Park. "I was in my own fantasy world a lot of the time. And I think I am still that weird kid. I'm someone who's able to say 'There's another world, and I can describe it to you, and come up with ideas for it' - and the secret is, people will pay for you that. Because not everyone is brave enough to be that weird. But you can actually make money with your imagination."

Another thing that was emphasised repeatedly throughout the day was the notion of 'soft skills', such as interpersonal skills, confidence, and simply being nice. Paix Robinson, who once had the job of a lifetime working on Beyonce's Lemonade tour, recalled how he got the job. "I got hired for that because I was talented, but the person who called me, they remembered me from a previous job because I was nice. You never know who is watching you. You never know what example you could be to someone sitting next to you even right now". 

The panel also discussed how they overcome barriers that can be faced by all creatives, whether working as professionals, or as a young person getting started in their bedroom. "You have to make it achievable", said Strange. "It can be so overwhelming when you're here, and you want that thing over there. The steps in between can be so overwhelming and confusing and complex. But what's going to get you to the end of the day? What's going to get you to make that thing? What's going to get you to write 20 words? Don't bite off more than you can chew, just start making something. Whatever you can do to feel that lovely sense of achievement, just focus on that. Just make."

"Community is real", expanded Robinson. "Trust and lean on your friends around you. Leaning into the human connection around you will serve you far better than 10 minutes on your phone any day. No matter what creative form you do, we're dealing with human emotions and human experiences, so just live. For me, when I'm designing something and I can't figure it out, I go out and people-watch and see what everyone else is doing. I try and live. You can't create anything if you yourself haven't lived. A lot of blocks happen when people are limiting their experiences, so in order to find what it is you want to do, just go and do some random stuff for 10 minutes and I promise you the block will go away".

Throughout the day, all of our panellists were keen to emphasise that while a portfolio of work is important - you have to be able to demonstrate that you can actually do a job - the importance of being nice was just as key. Notions of confidence, resilience and initiative were also recurring themes, and while they all took different pathways into the industry, they didn't always end up in the role they expected. And ultimately, the biggest advice of all, was simply to create something. The path to any career in the screen industries - be it working on video games, films, or costumes - starts with a young person deciding to make something.