More than 500 employers from across every part of the creative industries will welcome up to 30,000 young people into their businesses and organisations this month in a concerted drive to transform understanding of the range of jobs available.

Discover! Creative Careers Week is at the heart of the Creative Careers Programme, a DCMS-backed initiative under the special deal for the creative industries sector in the industrial strategy.

We at ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for UK screen, are delighted to be working with our colleagues at the Creative Industries Federation and our arts equivalent, Creative & Cultural Skills to deliver this ambitious plan to counter years of poor careers advice and genuinely open up exciting jobs to a wider range of diverse talent.

The screen industries contribution to Discover! will see more than 70 events involving 90 organisations and enable around 6,700 young people explore jobs from animating Peppa Pig to creating a launch campaign for a blockbuster film as part of a giant creative careers initiative this month.

Broadcasters, indies, studios, post-production facilities and VFX, animation and video games companies are among those taking part in the week which runs from 18 to 22 November.

Young people aged 11+ will get the chance to visit famous studios such as Leavesden, home to Harry Potter, Pinewood, home to James Bond, Three Mills, where shows such as MasterChef are made, and Elstree, which has hosted productions including The Crown and Strictly Come Dancing.

BBC will host BBC Young Reporters events at Salford, Birmingham, Bristol where young people get to inform a real audience about the stories that matter to them as well as allowing young people to broadcast on BBC Three Counties Radio in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.

Channel 4 is also opening its offices in locations including Leeds, London and Manchester to showcase a range of roles including film financing, their internal ad agency, programme-making and commissioning.

Sky is inviting secondary school students to join their journalism insight day to discover what life is like in the newsroom with journalists including sports reporters on hand to answer questions.

Gaston’s Cave, the animators behind Peppa Pig, will show how the hit show is made while other behind-the-scenes visits will take dozens of youngsters into the heart of VFX, post-production and film and television marketing in Soho at companies including Framestore, Molinare and The Farm.

Feref, the creative agency that created our Find Your Future campaign earlier this year, is joining forces with Sony Pictures and MPC to offer young people a chance to create their own launch campaign for a blockbuster movie.

Other companies taking part include ITV, All3Media, Lionsgate, Viacom, The Garden, Blue Zoo animation studio, Digital Orchard Group, Radio Centre, Bauer Academy, Confetti Media in Nottingham, HOME in Manchester and Showroom cinema in Sheffield as well as the National Film and Television School, BFI and the children’s film education charity Into Film.

Video and interactive games will be represented by Ubisoft, SEGA and the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield.

We are all committed to developing a more inclusive industry and the starting point is inspiring young people and informing them about the wide range of jobs available, including many they might not have heard of before. It is fantastic that so many organisations and businesses are creating opportunities for thousands of young people to experience our sector first-hand.

The ambition of the Creative Careers Programme is to help secure the skills pipeline for the creative industries which are the fastest growing sector of the UK economy. The Creative Industries Council estimated that there are more than 77,000 positions in the sector currently vacant or requiring better skills.

Anyone who is asked by a young person – or an older one looking to transfer their skills to another industry – for advice on jobs available can now go to the dedicated Creative Careers Programme website DiscoverCreative.Careers for more information.