Creative Academy
Boosting young people's access to opportunities for careers in the creative industries.
How it works | Impact | Partners | Get involved
Creative work is one of the fastest growing sources of livelihoods for young people.
Yet, creative skills are rarely embedded in formal education systems and millions leave school without them. Non-formal and online options are fragmented, and produce certificates employers struggle to trust. Young people with a strong interest in design, digital media and content creation lack structured, industry-relevant training and, critically, employer-recognized credentials.
Across countries, the challenge converges on three needs:
- Building creative, digital and AI skills that connect to real market demand;
- Proving those skills in a way employers recognize; and
- Turning certification into income through employment, freelancing or entrepreneurship
Generation Unlimited's Creative Academy is a global learning-to-earning programme that equips young people with creative, digital and AI-enabled skills, and moves them beyond skilling into dignified livelihoods in the creative economy.
The Creative Academy (CA) rests on the foundation of Generation Unlimited's Passport to Earning (P2E), which has enrolled more than 7 million young people across 10 countries. It adds a tangible creative portfolio demonstrating what a young person can do, specialized job-acquisition support, and structured pathways into earning.
Launched with Adobe as its inaugural partner, the CA builds on an existing pilot in India, expands into Brazil, and is designed to scale to new countries.
How the Creative Academy programme works
Every young person follows the same journey:
1. Learn creative skills. Industry-built courses, adapted to local languages and industries and optimized for mobile, delivered through schools, colleges, skilling centres and community hubs. Facilitators help learners finish and earn a recognized certificate.
2. Build a portfolio. Every learner can create a portfolio of the work they produced. The certificate shows they trained; the portfolio proves what they can do.
3. Connect to earning pathways. We meet young people where they are, helping them move from training to income through tailored support and three routes to a creative livelihood, shaped by the local market and their own ambition:
- Employment: connecting young people to employers, apprenticeships and jobs through Generation Unlimited's networks and national job platforms.
- Freelancing: safe access to the gig economy through guidance, mentorship and platform partnerships.
- Entrepreneurship: turning creative skills into micro-enterprises, especially in rural and underserved communities.
Partner with Generation Unlimited
Join us on our mission to support the next generation of changemakers. We are looking to partner with:
- Creative industry partners who can contribute tools, content, expertise, mentoring or real-world creative briefs.
- Employers and business partners who can offer internships, apprenticeships, project-based work or entry-level opportunities.
- Digital and opportunity platforms to help young people showcase their work, connect with clients, access jobs or explore safe freelance opportunities.
- Young people who want to join the Creative Academy and build up their skills, portfolios and access to income.
For more details, contact [email protected].
