This followed a day which had featured guest speakers including Barrie Knight (BK40 Productions), Rachel Haughey (Youth Production Network), Ipojucan Icaro & Rogerio de Souza (Spectaculu, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil), Aisling O'Connor (YPN Crew Chief/Cato Academy Graduate) and Mike Lowe (Britannia Row Productions). This year's YPN launch was sponsored by Britannia Row Productions, White Light, RES, Creative Draping and The National Skills Academy: Creative and Cultural Skills.
For the YPN, the event kicked off this year's Summer Season Tour of onsite crew and live stage projects. Up and coming production talent will be travelling across the country to enjoy valuable networking opportunities and be inspired by production specialists and the new generation of YPN Crew Chiefs that will be leading the teams on site this summer. Any young people wishing to apply for these summer positions, should contact the YPN at info@ypn.international
Hosting the event, the Osiers Road building in Wandsworth, South London, has been home to the renowned audio company for 24 years, the last two years as the base for the Britannia Row Productions Training academy, following the move to a new company headquarters at Twickenham Green. The Training Academy will continue its operations at Twickenham from April, with announcements of significant new developments expected soon."The time was right," said Brit Row's Mike Lowe of the decision to move out of Osiers Road. "We still had a year left to run on the lease, and could have stayed. But we'd already started thinking about the short and part-time courses for the Training Academy, which we knew we could run at Twickenham, and the landlord made an offer which was beneficial."
Barry Bartlett, course director for Britannia Row Training Academy, said that the short courses would provide better accessibility for those who could not commit to the solid 12-week block of time required for the intensive course. The short and part-time courses, announced earlier this month, include a two-day Basic PA course, a 15 x 1-day Live Sound Fundamentals course and a 15 x 1-day Live Sound Intermediate course. The intensive 12-week Live Sound Technology Course, which covers over 440 hours of training and hands-on practice, has so far been successfully completed by 61 students.
Bartlett told LSi: "With the 12-week intensive courses, we have found that the different levels of knowledge and experience at the beginning of the course were evened out by the end: in effect, the more experienced students raise the others up to their level, so that everyone finishes at the same high standard. When we came to think about offering the training in shorter or part-time courses, we realised we would lose that beneficial effect, so it made sense to be able to offer training at different levels - for beginners, intermediates and so on."
The full-time 12-week course will return later this year, and we can expect new announcements from the company in the near future.
(Lee Baldock)
