A truly exciting opportunity has become available for an Interim Chief Operating Officer to lead the Bristol Future Talent Partnership to the next stage of its development.
Closing date 13 June 2022 - Click here for details
We are a collaboration of leading organisations who share the vision of making Bristol the fairest and most racially equal place to study and work in the UK.
Our mission is to end the longstanding multiple inequalities and underrepresentation faced by people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds in the City, particularly in education and employment.
Our approach is to work with young people to raise aspirations, remove barriers and provide talent with opportunity.
We understand it is hard to be what you can’t see so we work with young people to raise their hopes, dreams and aspiration for the future.
Our work with young people is designed to expand their horizons by showing them diverse career opportunities they might never have thought of , giving them high quality work experience and providing them with mentoring and role models they can relate to.
Barriers preventing young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds from fulfilling their potential in education and employment are multi-faceted and complex.
We do not claim to be experts on this neither do we have the all the answers.
Nevertheless, we recognise the importance of identifying and acknowledging these barriers where they exist.
Where they do, we take positive action to tackle social, systemic, structural, and historical barriers within our organisations and across the City.
Providing talent with opportunity means giving young people the opportunity to discover possibilities, develop their skills and be equipped to fulfil their potential
One of our primary ways of doing this is by providing high quality work experience.
Our model for work experience is an investment in the young person. It is transformational in the confidence and benefit the young people get.
Held normally in person across multiple sites where possible; we provide an overview of career opportunities within the partner organisation as well as guidance on what it takes to get there through an apprenticeship, direct or graduate entry.
Our work experience programme also provides young people with the opportunity to develop important career skills such as cv writing, interview techniques, team working, networking and presenting.
Young people on our work experience programme are also tasked with working on a group project to tackle a live business problem and present their findings and recommendations to senior managers at the end of the week.
If you are from a Black African background, you are 5 times more likely to be unemployed in Bristol than if you were white.
Bristol is a great place to live. It is one of the top 10 cities in the UK and contributes over £15bn a year to the economy. It was the first city in the country to win the European Green Capital of the year award and has been listed by the Sunday Times as one of the Best Places to Live. In 2019 the BBC named Bristol as the best place to live outside London if you are under 26.
However, the positive life and work experience of the City is not shared by everyone.
Black and ethnic minorities in Bristol experience the 7th worse levels of multiple inequalities in England and Wales in education, employment, health and housing.
Bristol is also in the bottom quartile for employment inequality for Black and ethnic minorities with Black people in Bristol experiencing the 3rd highest level of educational inequality.
Tackling racial inequality is not only the right thing to do, with 16% of the population of Bristol from a Black or minority ethnic background there is a strong economic argument for doing so too.
Figures from Bristol a city divided? Ethnic Minority disadvantage in Education and Employment. Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity. Runnymede Report.
If you would like to see Bristol become a fairer and more racially equal place in education and employment join us today.
Organisations that are serious about changing the communities they live in step out of their comfort zone and take action.
We understand it’s not easy - it is easier to talk about it, make pledges and yet make no significant change.
Joining Bristol Future Talent Partnership you will find that by working with likeminded organisations across the City we can do more together than you can do alone.
You will learn from our collective experience and discover how your organisations can change for the better. Most importantly you will get to see the difference you can make in the lives of young people in the City and the impact this has on your staff and stakeholders.
We are currently working on a pilot programme modelling some of our initial thoughts on how we can raise aspirations, remove barriers and provide talent with opportunity.
Learning from our pilot will provide a framework for welcoming organisations that would like to join us in making Bristol a fairer and more racially equal place for everyone.
Executive Director of Operations, Wessex Water
Commercial Manager, Wessex Water
Principal, V6 Bristol
President and Board (NE) Director, Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Initiative & West of England Initiative
Pro Vice-Chancellor – Equalities and Civic Engagement, University of the West of England
Managing Director, Yeo Valley Farms (Production) Ltd
Bristol Commander Superintendent, Avon and Somerset Police
Senior Partner, Burges Salmon LLP
Head of Investment Analysis, Hargreaves Lansdown
Chief Executive and Acting Principal, City of Bristol College
Chief Operating Officer, Bristol Green Capital Partnership
Head of Research Development, University of Bristol
