We’re proud to say we are a UNESCO city of learning, which means you can rely on a world-class talent pool for the future. Nurturing, attracting and keeping talented people is key to our Economic Strategy 2025-35 and our inward investment offer. And central to that is inclusive, accessible training and skills for all our citizens.
Partnering with our universities, training partners and employers, we will deploy a comprehensive strategy that focuses on employment support, apprenticeships, adult and community learning and young careers and pathways.
To ensure success and fulfilment across our diverse population, we will:
Working across Bristol, the Employment Support Team focuses on inclusive employment and improving career prospects.
The team organise job fairs, host networking meetings, and link together support agencies, colleges and employers to help residents secure employment, employers to fill vacancies and skills shortages to be addressed. We work with partners across Bristol and the West of England to provide training, job seeking and in-work support.
Strategic Alignments
The team’s work aligns with our city’s ambitions for everyone to be treated fairly and live with hope. Its outputs of driving sustainability and future resilience underpin key parts how we will measure against and deliver the sustainable development goals:
Respond to rising unemployment
SDG: 8.5, 8.6
Increase access to employment support services
SDG: 1.2, 8.5, 10.2, 10.3, 16.6
Boost support for young people
SDG: 4.1, 4.4, 5.4, 8.6
Work with employers to support inclusive growth and improve the quality of work
SDG: 5.5
The Adult and Community Learning team believe whole heartedly in lifelong learning and as such offer two very different learning opportunities for Bristol residents to take part in.
Adult Learning: offers people the chance to explore an interest, skill or hobby, develop specialist skills to use at home, on holiday or at work and to meet new people.
All courses are competitively priced and learners can choose from a wide range of day and evening courses including languages, arts, crafts, computer skills and practical skills such as cookery, gardening and sewing. Most of the courses take place at Stoke Lodge in Stoke Bishop where there is a large free car park, with some additional courses at the St Pauls Learning and Family Centre.
For more information visit: Find a Course | Bristol Courses
Community Learning: work alongside a wide range of local organisations and community groups to develop and run courses that help people increase their confidence and self-esteem whilst exploring their goals and aspirations and gaining skills for life in areas such as English (including ESOL for those speakers of other languages), maths and IT.
The courses are free and are aimed at adults aged 19 or over who have no or few qualifications and who live in the most deprived areas of the city. The aim is to support people to live independently, gain confidence to support their families, contribute to their community and progress into volunteering, employment, or further learning.
For more information visit: Moving Forwards – Community Learning Bristol
The One City Apprenticeship scheme, is a co-ordinated approach to apprenticeship supporting diverse recruitment across public, private and SME employers. We also actively support SMEs in priority neighbourhoods to take up work trials and apprenticeships.
The Bristol City Council apprenticeships scheme, Bristol Apprentices, supports apprentices in business administration, customer service, finance, media, horticulture, ICT, engineering, sports coaching, cookery, health and social care, or human resource management.
And in construction On Site Bristol is designed to deliver skilled labour in many trades and support our recovery and city-wide construction and development programmes.
Other initiatives include Proud to Care – building a critical skills talent pipeline, and Workforce for the Future.
Alignments
Our apprenticeship schemes support a broad range of our sustainable development goals:
Develop a One City Apprenticeship scheme
SDG: 8.6, 10.2, 17.7
Expand apprenticeships in the construction sector
SDG: 8.6, 9.4, 12.2, 13.2
The Young Careers and Pathways team can support employers looking to build and develop their future workforce.
Pre 16 work
Bristol WORKS is building a unique collaboration between employers, Pre 16 learning providers, and local communities to develop a skilled local workforce. Our aim is to offer bespoke experience of work programmes created with schools, based on the needs of young people.
Research suggests that young adults who had four or more experiences of work while at school are five times more likely to engage in further education, employment and training.
For more information contact works@bristol.gov.uk
Post 16 work
The Post 16 participation team encourage and support young people to participate in education, employment or training.
We offer support for young people to recognise their skills and and help to apply for education opportunities or employment vacancies. Often young people require work experience to help them explore the world of work. If as an employer you would like to work with young people through this programme please email post16@bristol.gov.uk
For more information go to the Bristol Post 16 website.
