Alma Economics conducted a process and impact evaluation of the Creative Careers Programme (CCP) for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), covering the 2025 to 2026 financial year. CCP provides young people aged 11 to 24, careers advisers, and schools across England with specialist information, advice, and guidance on pursuing careers in the creative industries. Following increased funding, DCMS expanded the programme to include three pilot strands alongside a wider core strand.

Our evaluation took a theory-based approach, mapping the causal pathways set out in CCP's Theory of Change and testing how far these have materialised or are on track to be delivered. Using a mixed-methods design, we combined in-person and remote engagement across stakeholder groups, including ethnographic observation of programme events, 1:1 interviews, focus groups with children and young people, and feedback survey data.

The impact evaluation found that CCP is delivering its intended intermediate outcomes either fully or partially, suggesting a strong likelihood that longer-term impacts will follow. The process evaluation found that CCP's decentralised structure supports effective delivery at scale and that young people enjoy the programme's activities, while identifying stretched capacity among delivery partners and the need for longer planning timelines to engage schools effectively.

Read the report here.