Royal Ballet & Opera
Home of The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera, in Covent Garden, London.
About the work
Royal Ballet and Opera is one of the world’s leading performing arts organisations and home to two national companies, The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera. Its main stage is the opera house in Covent Garden, central London. Its costume, scenery and production work is based at High House Production Park in Purfleet, Thurrock. It’s a charity, known until 2024 as the Royal Opera House, and alongside its performances it runs a wide programme of learning, participation, apprenticeships and work experience for young people and communities.
Most of our work with Royal Ballet and Opera has been with its Apprenticeships and Work Experience team. It began in 2022 with strategy and storytelling workshops that helped the team start redeveloping its apprenticeship programme.
In 2023 we went on to run a Theory of Change workshop for the organisation’s ROH East team in Thurrock, followed by a series of critical friend sessions for the apprenticeships team. In 2024 we added one-to-one communications and confidence mentoring.
Royal Ballet and Opera commissioned us to review its careers education, work-based learning and work experience. We started by drafting a work experience manifesto with the team, setting out what an excellent placement should look like, with mentoring at its heart. We then benchmarked against other cultural organisations, including the National Theatre, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Sadler’s Wells, The Old Vic, Bush Theatre and Southwark Playhouse.
Our final report set out a practical roadmap for widening access and progression into careers, along with recommendations on the partnerships, team structure and capacity needed to deliver it.
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