About Skills London
Skills London 2010 will be the careers and skills event for young people from across the Capital and South East. Aiming to attract over 50,000 visitors, Skills London 2010 will showcase the range of opportunities available to young people including apprenticeships, education, training, employment, internships and other options.
The event will follow the format of Skills London 2008 which welcomed over 54,000 visitors, including Boris Johnson and three government ministers. ExCeL London was filled with young people, their parents, teachers and families, 200 different exhibiting organisations all interacting to help young people understand the different routes and opportunities available when making those all important career decisions.
Skills London 2008 buzzed with success as young people met their future employers, colleges and universities.
The key to Skills London 2008’s success was the high level of interactivity. The interactivity enabled exhibitors and visitors to come together, giving visitors the chance to have a go at the careers on offer and the organisations the opportunity to explain their career routes and job opportunities.
By engaging the visitors with focused taster activities exhibitors accessed thousands of London’s future workforce; inspiring them, entertaining them and most importantly informing them about the genuine opportunities available. 
Visitors included the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who tried lots of the hands-on activities and quizzed exhibitors and young people. The young visitors’ enthusiasm for the event and the career opportunities offered led the Mayor to comment:
“I think Skills London 2008 is a wonderful event and it shows that it is vital to get out there and get the skills you need to get into a job."
The all abilities/all ambitions approach delivered a diverse range of visitors. Exhibiting organisations were able to discuss apprenticeships, training, jobs as well as college and university courses. Many visitors arrived knowing very little about the careers they were interested in, or which industry sectors they wanted to consider. The holistic approach of Skills London combining educational institutions and employers enabled these visitors to find out about careers and the training they required all under one roof.
Hannah Southerland from Tube Lines enthused:
“Skills London is the biggest careers event in the country. We’re a London based firm, in Canary Wharf, Stratford and we really want to be here to show people what we do.”
Click here to view the highlights of the event.
