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This article presents findings from the Changing Youth Labour Markets and Schools to Work Transitions in Modern Britain projects undertaken between 2009 and 2010. The projects examined young people's experiences and perceptions about study, work, and the future while going through transitions. The target group was young people on vocational courses at further education colleges in London aged between 18 and 24. This group is an under-researched cohort, who is neither NEET nor following 'tidy' pathways. We apply the conceptual framework of temporal orientations of agency, originally proposed by Emirbayer and Mische (1998). We discuss the interplay between young people's agency and the contexts in which they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper questions the link that policy-makers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the creative and cultural (C&C) sector. It identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector undermine this assumption and how the UK's policy formation process inhibits education and training (E&T) actors from countering these labour market conditions. It demonstrates how non-government agencies ('intermediary organizations') are creating new spaces to assist aspiring entrants to develop the requisite forms of 'vocational practice', 'social capital' and 'moebius strip' (i.e., entrepreneurial) expertise to enter and succeed in the sector. It concludes by identifying a number of: (a) new principles for the governance of E&T at the national level; (b) pedagogic strategies to facilitate 'horizontal' transitions into and within the C&C sector; and (c) skill formation issues for all E&T stakeholders to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]