Five years on and 20 cohorts later and The Juice Academy is still going strong

It’s hard to believe that it’s five years since we decided to do something scary and potentially silly and launch our own social media/digital marketing apprenticeship programme.

And last night we celebrated our 20th cohort of apprentices, with speakers including our new metro mayor, Andy Burnham and Carly Phillips, one of the apprentices from our very first cohort!

The Juice Academy is the not for profit sister company to our main business – Tangerine Communications – and was launched to help fill the chronic digital skills gap we all suffer from and to create jobs for young people.

Five years and 20 cohorts on and we’re soon to appoint our 300th apprentice and I’ve been reminiscing so thought I’d share…

We’ve had apprentices who’ve interviewed celebrities and trolled celebrities. We’ve had apprentices who’ve attended international music festivals and international policy festivals.

Apprentices who have made people laugh, made people cry and made people think.

Apprentices who work for police forces, power houses and politicians; councils, charities and cinemas; retailers, renewables and recruiters; airports, agencies and artists; manufacturers, music makers and media organisations.

And we couldn’t be more proud!

But none of this would have been possible without our (cue Oscar speech)…

• Tutors – Tangerine’s award-winning practicing digital specialists who do all of the core training

• Guest lecturers – people from the business and tech (and other) communities who give up their time free of charge to teach our bright young things something – many of them every quarter for five whole years – astonishing!

• Little Juice team, Georgia and Heather (and until recently, Niall)

• Sister company – Tangerine – for all the support they give us

• Our training provider partners - Total People – we literally wouldn’t have been able to do it without these apprenticeship gurus

• Our coding partners - Northcoders

• Our employers – more than 200 of the region’s leading organisations, many of which have taken multiple apprentices from us

• Our advisory board – a group of 12 leading business brains who helped us set up and make sure The Academy was fit for purpose

• Our sponsors – especially people like RSM who enable us to run events which bring our communities together

• Our apprentice alumni – who keep in touch regularly and keep helping us spread the word

• And our general supporters – just too many to mention

Andy Burnham

There just are no words to express our gratitude towards everyone who’s helped us make The Academy what it is today.

It’s been a surprising, astonishing multi award-winning success of a ride and I’m looking forward to another five years so please don’t go anywhere!!

This is just the beginning!

By Sandy Lindsay MBE

Chair, Tangerine & The Juice Academy