Sgil Cymru offer three different types of creative and digital media apprenticeships as well as bespoke courses for industry professionals looking to upskill or step up or across to a new role.

Business News Wales sat down with the Founder and MD of Sgil Cymru, Sue Jeffries to discuss why people have chosen apprenticeships with them.

You can catch the full interview here:

When talking about how the pandemic affected Sgil Cymru, Sue said:

“Since lockdown, our audience has become bigger and bigger because we’re doing  more online. Obviously, you don’t have to come to Cardiff anymore, so we can deliver to the whole of the UK much easier than we did before.”

Based at Great Point Seren Stiwdios (formerly Pinewood Studio Wales) in Cardiff, the team has more than 100 years combined experience in bilingual media training and production.

The Sgil Cymru team have trained over 120 apprentices by working with companies across south Wales including BBC Cymru Wales, Equinox Communications, Golley Slater, ITV Cymru Wales, Real SFX, Amplified Business Content and S4C. Through partnership with ScreenSkills, Sgil Cymru is delivering a package of training courses for the UK film & TV industry.

But at the end of their apprenticeships, what range of skills do people get? Sue followed on by saying:

“They get a formal qualification, a  Level 3 or Level 4 Diploma, which in itself is quite an achievement because lots of people that come to us are the kinds of people that haven’t done particularly well in formal education. They’re the kind of people that I always say are ‘can do’ people. They’re not the kind of people that want to talk about Television and Film – they’re the kind of people that want to do it!”

As well as training with Sgil Cymru at Great Point Seren Stiwdios s in Cardiff, or since the pandemic, via Zoom, the apprentices have and will be working in lots of different jobs – including camera, post-production, casting, art department, costume, production, graphic design and special effects.

All the apprentices are paid an apprenticeship allowance by their employer, work on real productions and will complete the apprenticeship with both a qualification, a year’s worth of experience of working in the media as well as a bucket full of contacts which may prove useful for work in the future.

If you’re looking to get your foot in the door at a media organization, Sgil Cymru might just be the opportunity that you’ve been waiting for!