Work experience
Complete your work experience in a setting like no other! During your placement, you’ll experience firsthand what it’s like to work for an educational charity at our iconic visitor attraction in Cornwall. We offer a range of exciting placements across our teams, including horticulture, marketing and education. Alongside gaining practical skills, you’ll also explore how your future career can contribute to making a positive difference for the planet.
We have now closed applications for 2026 work experience.
Opportunities we currently offer
Horticulture Assistant
Guest Engagement (Stewards, Retail, Admissions, Cafés)
Chef team
ICT
Marketing and Communications
Office based teams
Security and Site Management
Education/Schools Team
More details about each role
Learn directly from our team on how we care for our incredible living landscapes. With us, you will gain an understanding of sustainable gardening practices.
Discover how we create exceptional customer experiences, making every guest feel valued, welcomed, and inspired. You'll assist with purchases, offer recommendations and more.
Experience how we craft delicious food from ingredients we’ve harvested at Eden, serving freshly prepared meals to over half a million visitors every year.
See how our ICT team keeps the Eden Project running smoothly, delivering innovative solutions and ensuring every system is functioning
Learn from our experts about how we engage with millions of people through our digital and offline marketing channels. You'll discover how advertising and media helps us to reach different audiences.
Get hands-on and learn how our office-based teams provide vital support and coordination to keep the Eden Project operating efficiently.
Gain insight into how our Security and Site Management teams ensure our site remains safe, welcoming, and well-maintained.
Discover how we inspire students and teachers by creating engaging learning experiences that encourage positive action for the planet.
What to expect
Our work changes from team to team and throughout the year, so you can expect a varied and dynamic experience! Every work experience placement gives you the chance to go behind the scenes of both a charity and a major visitor attraction. You will start with an introductory session that explains our ethos, the purpose of our work, and some of the highlights from our incredible history. During the week, you’ll have opportunities to meet and learn from experts in their fields, while exploring what a career with purpose could look like for you.
Placements
We offer placements to secondary school and college students from Easter through to Summer, and where possible, we aim to accommodate requests outside these periods to provide as many opportunities as we can.
We accept applications throughout the year, but placement decisions are usually made around February half term. Applications will continue to be considered after this date, so if you haven’t applied by then, don’t worry, please don’t feel you have missed out! This approach ensures a fair chance for as many students as possible to apply and gives our teams a better understanding of their year ahead, which helps us offer more placement opportunities.
Information for schools
If you are a teacher or careers lead that would like to know more please email Greg Richards, our Career Development Specialist: grichards@edenproject.com.
FAQs
This can vary by team but a usual day will be 9am to 4pm.
If you are successful, you will be provided with more information about getting onto site before we open to the public. However, it is worth noting the public transport is limited so we would ask you to consider this question before applying. More information can be found here.
While there is the option of buying food on site, we would recommend bringing your own lunch. There are various staff kitchens in our back of house buildings and we would let you know specifically what facilities were available if you were successful in getting a placement.
Uniform and PPE requirements vary by team—for example, our horticulture team has different needs compared to our finance team. We provide any specific uniform or PPE required and will inform you in advance of suitable workwear. The exception to this would be boots, for which we would recommend you have your own steel-toe caps or hard-wearing boots if working in our Horticulture or back-of-house Chefs team.
If you are a university student interested in a placement with our Horticulture team please email Rhiannon Allen, our Horticulture Coordinator, at rallen@edenproject.com. If you are looking for work experience but not currently in education please see our volunteering page for more information and current opportunities.
We aim to offer as many opportunities as possible so will try to accommodate requests outside of our main window of Easter through Summer. We would look at these requests on a case-by-case basis, as we would need to make sure our teams had capacity to accommodate a student and that there was relevant work taking place that would make the placement meaningful.
We do our best to accommodate requests for roles not listed, provided the relevant teams have availability. However, please note that we often receive requests for teams that no longer exist, as our structure has evolved over the past 25 years. If you are interested in a placement in a team not listed, please ensure that the role is still active before applying.
We aim to get back to people in February, if they have applied before then. After that we will aim to reply within two weeks of receiving applications.
