Frequently asked questions
Yes – as long as during their traineeship, your trainees will be supported to deliver events and activities that take place in the Rotherham borough. It’s key to the traineeship programme that young people from Rotherham are supported into employment, and that the programme enables more and better provision of accessible, high-quality cultural, creative and sports events across our borough.
An example of this is our successful partnership with Sheffield DocFest. The Sheffield DocFest trainees started in post since February 2024. For the first part of their traineeships, they gained vital experience around networking, film programming and working in the industry as they helped plan and deliver Sheffield DocFest’s flagship June festival. During the second part of their traineeships, the Sheffield DocFest trainees used these new skills to run a season of documentary film screenings in venues across the Rotherham borough.
Please note that the traineeship host programme is only open to organisations based in South Yorkshire.
No. The funding can be used to pay the trainees’ salaries, as well as their sick pay, holiday pay, pension contributions and other on-costs. It can also be used to fund CPD and training for the trainees, including ‘Go See’ trips that can support their career development and creative networks and knowledge.
If you are successful in applying for a creative programming budget, this funding must be used to help your trainees plan and deliver events or activities as part of the Children’s Capital of Culture public Festival year programme. As such, it can be used to fund things such as freelance artist costs, venue hire, and transport costs.
The funding cannot be used to fund existing staff members’ costs, operational overheads, or equipment.
As part of our partnership agreement with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA), all successful applicants will need to complete detailed financial reporting that itemises how their funding has been spent.
No. Some of our organisations do choose to bring in freelance trainers or mentors to offer additional support to their trainees, but this is paid for from their own core budgets.
Possibly!
You can certainly invite young people you know to complete the online application form (in fact, it would be great if you wanted to do this!). However, all applications will be considered using a fair, consistent and open selection process, as outlined above. This includes that all applications are anonymised prior to initial shortlisting. If host organisations have pre-existing relationships with any applicants (for example, if applicants are young people who’ve previously engaged with their organisation) then this should be declared.
The funding cannot be used by host organisations to employ people aged under 26 who are already working with them (for example, to ‘top up’ the wages of an existing young employee).
Yes!
It’s true that we run lots of large events and festivals. But this isn’t all we do! Targeted interventions and programmes which work with a smaller cohort of participants but in a more sustained way are an incredibly important part of the Children’s Capital of Culture project. We also hugely value working with local organisations, and supporting public, private, and third sector organisations of all sizes as part of this.
Yes!
Sarah Christie, Programme Manager for Children’s Capital of Culture, and Dawn Richmond-Gordon, Creative Skills Manager for Children’s Capital of Culture, are very happy to do this. These members of the team know the traineeship programme and host application process well, but do not sit on the recruitment and selection panel and will not influence selection decisions. As such, they are well placed to hopefully help you out!
You can contact Sarah on sarah.christie@rotherham.gov.uk, and Dawn on dawn.richmond-gordon@rotherham.gov.uk. They are happy to exchange emails or arrange time for a call or catch up.
We know that not all organisations who would like to host trainees will have significant experience in writing funding applications or other similar types of forms. Because of this, we really encourage you to get in touch if you’d like us to check over your application form before you press ‘send’! We hope that through this a really strong and diverse range of organisations can host trainees during 2025 and beyond.