Cultivator Internship Incentives are designed to help ease the burden on businesses who want to take an internship. We can pay a maximum of £4000 to businesses taking on an intern for up to 12 months.

An internship to us is a new post at an entry-level, which is contracted at a minimum of 0.6 full-time equivalent (three days = 22.5 hours/week). This cannot be an existing post – although it could be an expansion of an existing post. You are expected to pay at least the National Living Wage to the intern. We can support internships of up to £4000.

Before you can access schemes such as this, you must go through a sign-up process and become a Cultivator client. Because this scheme is aimed at businesses that have employees or are ready to take on employees, not all Cultivator clients will be able to apply. You will be informed whether you are eligible once you have completed the sign-up process.

You will need to discuss applying to the scheme with your Creative Business Advisor. If your advisor agrees to support your application, they’ll help you make your application as strong as possible and support you through the recruitment process if needed.

You will need to make sure the internship / apprenticeship you are proposing matches our criteria before making the application.

The highest financial value of the bursaries is £4000. This is based on you employing an intern for 12 months for at least 22.5 hours a week.

We can also offer smaller incentives for shorter-term internships.

How much you choose to pay your intern is up to you. However, we stipulate that you must pay the intern the full, ‘25 and over’ National Living Wage regardless of their age if you wish to apply to our scheme. As of April 2019, this will be £8.21 per hour, but this figure is reviewed annually.

Applications to our internship schemes are assessed on a rolling basis. We will aim to assess applications and let you know the result within two weeks of receiving them.

There is no cap on the number of times that you can apply to this scheme. If you can show us that you have adequate provision in place to support new interns, then we will consider your application.

We expect your recruitment process to be open, transparent and fair. You’ll be asked to share all the job adverts as well as the job description with us to make sure that it’s compliant with the requirements of our funders. We are happy to advise you on the recruitment process if required.

Payment of the Cultivator Internship Programme grants will be made monthly/ bi-monthly in retrospect, on receipt by the Cultivator Office of the following evidence:

• copy of the job description and all advertisements for the intern/apprentice post (initial claim only)
• notice of completion of the recruitment process, name of the appointed intern/apprentice and start date (initial claim only)
• completed and signed claim form with evidence of hourly rate paid
• evidence that the intern/apprentice has been paid e.g. copies of bank account statements showing payment of the overall salary cost and payslips/intern invoices.

The final payment of the grant will be made on receipt of a claim form with salary payment evidence and evaluations of the funded opportunity by both the employer and the intern/apprentice. We will provide you with a template for the evaluation.

We encourage all businesses who apply to this scheme to consider whether they are ready to take on an intern and to exercise an appropriate level of thoroughness in their recruitment practices. However, we understand that sometimes circumstances may change lead to you parting ways with your intern.

If this should arise, we ask that you provide us with a short piece of reflective feedback outlining what you’ve learnt from the experience and how you plan to move forward. If you have not yet claimed all of your internship award and would like to re-recruit for the position then we will consider this and support you through it.