Break the Wall is our longest running mentoring programme, and we are thrilled that it has been nominated in this year’s Business Charity Awards under the Consortium category that celebrates outstanding partnerships between charities and businesses. 

In 2023 we ran six programmes, matched 139 mentoring pairs, and enabled 755 mentoring sessions. We worked with 45 partners across different sectors in the creative industry with companies including Mullenlowe UK, Here, Inizio Engage, Design Bridge and Partners, Influence Digital, The Jamie Oliver Group, Digitas UK, Pearl & Dean, and Bulletproof.

Thanks to our partners, our programmes directly improve employability and future career opportunities of 16-25 year olds from lower socioeconomic backgrounds by helping them overcome the disadvantages that they can experience. 

Break the Wall enables us to support our mentees with almost instant results to help them achieve their goals and improve accessibility into the creative industry.

The 1-1 support they receive from their mentor helps improve their employability opportunities and future career prospects. 

In 2023 our data showed that mentees had a stronger understanding of career options, felt more confident networking, and were more motivated to research roles and career opportunities at the end of the programme. They also developed skills to help them problem solve and generate ideas.

Mentee Impact Highlights

Mentors on the programme get more than simply the opportunity to volunteer and give back. Over the 16 weeks, through our programme training, we are creating advocates for our cause, which helps us create long-term change in the industry by ensuring there are leaders in businesses who can advocate for socioeconomic diversity and support this change in their workplace and within their professional networks. This is then reflected in hiring policies to ensure entry to the industry is accessible, managing diverse talent and investing in them to support progression and retention or adapting workplace culture to be more inclusive. 

Our reporting data shows that following the programme mentors felt more equipped to support young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds into the industry, understood the barriers to access, felt confident advocating for socioeconomic diversity, and felt confident contributing to their workplace diversity strategy.

Mentor Impact Highlights

Creating change in the creative industries isn’t something we can do alone, which is why working with partners is essential to help us break the class ceiling in this industry. Improve access and inclusion in the creative world or work can provide us all with better, more diverse, creative outputs. From the next generation of music producers, screenwriters, journalists or advertising executives, diversity is needed throughout the creative industry, not purely creative roles. 

Find out more about our programmes and how to get involved below.

Read our nomination entry here. 

To get involved with Break the Wall as a mentor, find out more on our page here.

If you are 16-25 years old and looking to get a mentor, apply here.