Sky’s The Limit; A Day Trip With NCS

Recently, a group of 150 young people taking part in NCS experiences across London spent the day at the Sky Campus in Isleworth for a day of fun activities and future focused talks.

The day looked at four different themes - social action, careers, skills development, and reflection - with Sky setting up a number of activities to help the team develop essential workplace skills like speaking, listening, collaboration, and teamwork. 

“I got an insight into careers and different pathways a person could take as well as potential pathways for myself” said sixteen-year-old Arpita. 

The group took part in interactive activities and heard from a number of different Sky employees about what they do, how they got there, their career stories, and employment tips. Poet and programme maker, Isaac G Nartey also spoke about creating Life & Rhymes, which is Sky’s first programme about poetry. He even did an impromptu recital of one of his poems! And, they got to visit the new art campus and production space where presenters from Sky Sports News were broadcasting live to thousands of people.

The Creative Careers Challenge saw the young people come up with their own social action pledges using broadcast quality equipment at Sky’s Sky Up Academy Studios. Arpita said, “It was an immersive and interactive opportunity to understand company logistics and what happens behind the scenes.” 

In the reflection portion of the day, the team of young people looked back on their NCS experiences and what they had learnt during the day, to think about actions they could take in their future world of work. “I found that team based activities were very effective as it built my confidence and gave me experience for future situations for when it is required of me to work in a team and made me delve deeper to find answers and solutions" said Arpita.

The day was part of Sky’s Sky Up programme, which helps up-skill those who are digitally isolated with technology, connectivity, and training. The programme aims to set up 100 new Digital Hubs targeted at economically deprived areas, and give out Tech Grants to young people for new devices and reliable internet connectivity that will support learning. You can find out more about Sky Up on their website.