Nottingham Playhouse

We wanted to enable key staff to experience a cohort of relationships at a similar seniority in other industries. We are not an industry with an obvious career progression pathway and it felt important to acknowledge that learning can still develop key staff in role or develop their existing roles further.

Initially in 2017 and we started working with NTU in 2019.

It has enabled our apprentices to have more confidence in approaching the changes they’d like to see in our business. It has given us access to a pool of thinkers that has augmented our own. It has definitely helped view what we do through differing lenses and, in some cases, that has led to changes in practice. In others it has been a worthwhile exercise revisiting why we work in certain ways and why it’s important to us as a charity and a business.

It has definitely enhanced our apprenticeship programme to be able to offer apprenticeships to mid career staff rather than only entry level. We have felt well supported by NTU and the work has been detailed and useful to us as a company. Although it’s been hard work to the staff taking the MBA modules at no point have we felt that the workload hasn’t taken their professional and family commitments into account. It has definitely enhanced our apprenticeship programme.

Yes, the right apprenticeship for a mid career employee refreshes their thinking, enables them to get some perspective and reinforcement and the company benefits from that.

We have found NTU to be a great apprenticeship provider. The work has been interesting and relevant and the outcomes for the two MBA apprentices we’ve had have been really positive.