What are the prospects for young people in Cornwall?

Recently here at Sea we have been thinking a lot about youth prospects in Cornwall, we have been involved in a countywide talent search for young entrepreneurs working alongside Cornwall College and have also appeared on a Radio 4 feature regarding opportunities for 18 year olds in the Duchy.

Sea has a lot of experience when it comes to community outreach, so when approached by Cornwall College to conduct a search for youngsters with an entrepreneurial spark we were more than happy to get involved, even more so as the project shares similarities with our recently completed New Work project which focused on employment opportunities in Cornwall where we worked closely with over 300 of those at risk or recently made redundant.

Just as we had challenges and barriers to overcome with new work, as did we experience hurdles along the way with this latest venture that we branded Pitch.

We are fortunate at Sea to be based in Cornwall, it's country side, sand and surf makes it a great place to live and work, so when we decided we needed to create some really inspiring videos of people who had started their business, we did not have to look far; we had the pleasure of talking with award winning companies such as Frugi and Finnisterre as well as the young entrepreneur of the year Dan Parker. These interviews as well as others including our very own hopeless entrepreneur Gary can be found by clicking on the link in the right hand column of this page.

The Enterprise Search

Without doubt, as with any project, when engaging with youth it is good to make use of digital content and social media but we feel that is just the start, so once we had our brand, social media channels, website and content set up we hit the streets.

We were not the only ones out and about across Cornwall engaging with 16 - 23 year olds, Claire Walker from Radio 4 as part of a You & Yours feature was rooming Cornwall speaking with 18 year olds about their prospects and opportunities. You can listen to the full 12 minute feature below:

"According to the latest figures from the offices of national statistics there are nine thousand people in Cornwall and the isles of silly claiming Job seekers allowance and nearly one third of them are between 18 and 24."

When you also consider the rising costs of higher education coupled with the fact that a degree is no longer a guarantee of a Job (if it ever was) the future opportunities may very well seem few and far between.

"Cornwall has a very strong word of mouth culture" Robert Woolf (sea-communications)

Many interviewees voiced dismay at the difficulties of finding jobs as a young person, part due to advertising, an issue we are familiar with from our discoveries in new work where the Job centre only advertises a third of all jobs available and more than that we also discovered that out of those third two thirds were low skilled positions. So with these challenges what are the options for these young individuals?

As part of the Pitch enterprise search, we where offering another option to young people in the form of Peter Jones Enterprise Academy, if the Job market has slowed down and the cost of higher education increases then surely a course that encourages people to start their own business is a great option, we are a country of small businesses, with 99% of Britain's companies being SME's it makes sense to embrace that fact.

The challenge is then; how do we get the youth of Cornwall interested? Our experience has taught us that a multitude of channels is required, not just social media, but visits to community group's engagement in towns, but whatever the channel is, the message has to be right. Regardless of how technological the channel or how "current" it may be if the message is uninteresting or targeting the wrong audience it will ultimately fail.

Listen to the radio show

Duration: 13 minutes

If you would like to find out more about the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy please feel free to contact us

Tel: 01326 259 986

Email: Kathryn@sea-communications.co.uk