Meet Joe Briel, the social worker helping young people with experience of the care system, or children’s social care, break into the creative arts. We caught up with Joe to hear how his award-winning project, ReWired, is opening doors across London.
We’re delighted to announce that the winner of the 2026 Frontline Innovation Award is Joe Briel – a music industry professional turned social worker and now the founder of ReWired.
It was fantastic to attend the Frontline awards recently and celebrate so many inspiring care professionals. We're currently supporting Frontline’s Innovation Programme, which helps social workers turn bold ideas in to real-world solutions.
We're proud to sponsor this award which celebrates ideas that are making an impact. This year, the Chair of our Grants Committee, Denise Jones, had the pleasure of presenting Joe with his award.
Joe’s journey to founding ReWired is a unique one. Before the pandemic, his career was in the music and sports industries, but he eventually felt the need for a change that allowed him to make a bigger difference.
He decided to retrain as a social worker and soon found himself working with young people in London who were at risk of criminal exploitation, contextual harm or serious youth violence. Joe saw that many of these young people were full of potential but lacked the opportunity to use it.
He realised he could use his old industry contacts to get those young people into creative spaces. After seeing how much they gained from the experience, he pitched the idea to Frontline. This was where ReWired started.
Since launching in March 2025, Rewired has already worked with 60 young people and has 5 graduates from their programme. This is a great achievement for an industry that is so hard to break into.
While the UK creative sector is worth £150 billion, you are currently three to four times more likely to work in it if you went to private school. This is a huge gap for those from different backgrounds.
Working-class professionals are not only less likely to access this sector, but they are also more likely to leave it early. There are many reasons for this: for instance, it can be incredibly tough to navigate an industry built on 'who you know,' or to sustain a career during periods of low pay and unstable hours.
ReWired works to prove to young people at risk that a creative career can pay. They show young people that there is a rewarding career waiting for them in the creative world. They do this through a six-week programme where young people work alongside high-level creatives.
The process starts with an Open Day where professionals share real-world advice on pay and job roles. Participants can then choose a pathway – like live events, studio engineering, or film production – and are matched with a mentor.
The mentor isn’t there for just professional advice, they provide pastoral support for whatever challenges the young person might be facing in their personal life during the programme. This helps them stay on track during difficult times.
The most exciting part of the process is that any student who completes the six-week programme is guaranteed a full day of paid work, at a standard industry rate. In addition, all ReWired participants are fully reimbursed for their training days. This ensures that background does not become a barrier to entry.
The win feels affirming, especially at times when the system can feel too big to change
Joe Briel
Winner of 2026 Innovation Award
Receiving the Innovation Award was a significant moment for Joe. He told us that the win feels ‘affirming’, especially at times when the system can feel too big to change.
Looking ahead, Joe has big ambitions. He wants ReWired to become a trademark for the creative industries. A sort of rubber stamp that shows the company has invested in young people with social care involvement.
Within three years, he hopes to expand beyond London, especially to de-industrialised towns across the UK to address regional inequality. Ultimately, Joe’s mission comes down to the idea that the core skills for success are equally distributed, but the opportunity isn’t.
By building a bank of talented graduates, ReWired is making sure that being care-experienced is no longer a barrier to a brilliant career. We’re so proud to support Joe and ReWired as they help young people shape the future of the UK’s creative story.
