Work Experience – The Ast Way

Vehicle livery specialist AST ran a week-long work experience placement built around a live brief rather than shadowing staff, with a student from Skipton coming out having actually made something, according to AST.

The placement saw the student, studying Business & Design, given an open brief to design something, anything, in AST's design department. He built his own clothing brand inspired by the Lake District, combining mountain photography, typography and graphics into a T-shirt range, then worked through production himself, positioning transfers and pressing graphics onto garments, before extending the concept into signage, per AST. That gave the business a look at his output across design, production, workwear and print in a single week.

Why this matters: fleets wrestling with technician and design-skills shortages should note the model, not just the anecdote. A brief-and-build structure tests capability far faster than observation does, and it costs suppliers little to run. Worth asking your livery, bodyshop and SMR partners whether their placements produce anything, or just attendance.