What is Chichester’s current position on apprenticeships and how did you come to be here?
“I took on the role as a lead assessor for apprenticeships in technical theatre. When I first started at the college, which was about eight years ago, I came in as a course leader for the vocational area. I’d come from industry prior to that, I’d been in performing arts industry as a stage manager for 20 something years before that.”
“I was handed two apprentices who I sort of took over from somebody else. I was handed two apprentices who were already on the old framework, I think they had been embedded in music and theatre department, as they were employed by us at the college.”
“I took on their training to finish off the qualification that they were doing, but it went really well. Throughout that process we decided to take on a couple more the following year, because some venues had approached us and said, are you interested in having an apprentice?”
“It just sort of built from there really. Each year it built up a little bit exponentially. We have more and more apprentices and our sales team started selling it better. The big turning point came for us was when we moved from frameworks to standards.”
“We found that people are far more interested in that as a program. That’s kind of how it’s grown, and I’ve been running it alongside my production arts program for eight years.”
How do apprenticeships help Chichester to build the future of the creative arts industry?
“We have a responsibility as training providers to help the industry reawaken and help it retrain. This year we’ve had a really big influx of venues signing up to take on apprentices because so many people who had previously been in the industry had decided to leave because they were worried about the certainty of actually having a job in light of the pandemic.”
“It sorted of started back on its knees really and apprenticeships were or seem to be a real anchor to the industry. What vendors are doing now is they’re training up their own staff and giving opportunities to apprentices through training providers like us to rebuild the industry, to literally start from the ground up.”
“It’s been a really difficult time, but we seem to have a thriving program again.”
“I think we’re lucky in the performing arts and that, in my opinion, it’s the greatest job in the world. It’s the happiest place to be and it’s creative and it’s exciting.”
“It changes all the time, one day you could be working in Scotland and the next day you’ll be in Spain and the next day you’ll be back home in London, it’s exciting. We make sure that apprentices have all of the information, that they understand that, even though they’re employed as an apprentice for two years, that’s not likely to be the rest of their career.”
What lessons have you learned over your time regarding apprenticeships?
“Young technicians come in all shapes and sizes. You might have one technician who has been doing technical work from the time they were 11 in their school theatre and are really very capable, and you might have another technician, who’s just been going to the theatre and actually never done anything at all backstage.”
“My job is to get them all up to the same level, by the time they finished their apprenticeship. So that’s quite tricky, making sure that you can really differentiate and identify specific needs in your learners. When you’re doing an apprenticeship, you don’t see them that often, they only get one day a week to do their coursework.”
“We don’t train them every week. We give them coursework to do, or I might be spending one week visiting one group of apprentices. You have to be very adept at making sure that you’re identifying what those students need and how those apprentices are going to get those skills from within their workplace.”
“That’s quite tricky, it’s a very complicated program to manage. I’ve learned a lot about young people and their kind of educational journey identifying needs and making sure we’re meeting the needs of the employers as well. When you’re running a vocational course, like I do. I don’t have to consider that third party.”
“It’s all about my relationship with the students and what the students are learning at the end of the course. When you do an apprenticeship, you’ve got to consider the employer. The apprentice has got to be worth it. They’ve got to be a good enough investment for the employer. They’ve got to be somebody who is adding value to the employer and making sure that the venue is still functioning like a fully-fledged theatre, that it’s not becoming a classroom, because that’s not what the theatre wants. The theatre wants to train up a technician capable of putting on shows independently. They don’t want to be picking up the pieces for somebody who can’t manage their own time or who is unable to hand in a piece of coursework on time that they’re very rarely interested in that.”
“So, I’ve also learned about managing that triangle between me, the employer and the apprentice.”
What is it that allows you to ensure an apprentices training and development is equal, regardless of experience?
“I would say it’s about an individual training plan. Each learner that I work with, each apprentice that I work with, I have a lot of one-to-one time with them, and we work on an individual development plan.”
“Some apprentices I’ll give extra reading and research to do. I might visit them more often than I visit others. I work really closely with the employer to make sure that the employer knows what that apprentice needs to do and learn. Every apprentice that comes to me will always have a bias.”
“They’ll always have an area that they want to spend more time in. It’s usually either lighting or sound. If they are very adept in lighting, they need to spend less time in the lighting department so that they can learn about the other skills. It’s about individually planning each apprentice’s journey and making sure that we are communicating completely with the employer, making sure they know what we’re doing on behalf of that apprentice and checking that they can give the apprentice what’s missing.”
What are your top successes as a result of apprenticeships?
“The thing that I’m very proud of is my relationship with the employer. Some of those relationships have come from my own previous relationships with them from being in the industry, having worked with them before, but we do have a number of employers working with us now who I’ve not worked with before.”
“I really think that that relationship and showing them the value of having an apprentice and how we as a training provider are reliable, we’re consistent, we follow up on everything we said we were going to do, we come right with all our promises. We become a really valuable part of the process for them as well.”
“They know they can trust us to deliver a really good program and they know that if they have a problem, it’s just me. They don’t need to worry that tomorrow is going to be a different assessor or someone else who’s going to deal with them.”
What are your opinions on the evolution of apprenticeships and the introduction of the levy and particular endpoint assessment?
“I think the levy is brilliant. I think the levy is a really good incentive. I’m not really aware as to how much it benefits an organization, if apprenticeships are difficult for them to kind of manage and instigate. But I do know that it supports our industry particularly.”
“The end point assessment for this apprenticeship is very much about supporting the success of the apprentice, it’s very much about just getting the apprentice to show off what they are capable of and it doesn’t feel oppressive and it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to trick them, to try and to kind of trip them up at all.”
“So my experience so far is that it’s been a very supportive process and that the apprentices have come out of it feeling really positive.”
Would you recommend apprenticeships as a route into employment in the creative industry?
“What an apprenticeship does, is actually offers the jobs to people who really love it and want to be part of the industry, but for one reason or another decided that the alternative routes in the industry are not for them. So yeah, I do. I think it’s a really valuable way to start a career in our industry, particularly because it’s so technical, it’s so practical. It’s so hands-on, and actually, even when I’m teaching it as a course, the best way for my students to learn is to do it. I always say that in the classroom, at the end of a lesson where we’ve done paperwork, or we’ve been looking at a screen, I say to them all, this will make sense when you’re doing it.”
“So an apprenticeship gives them that practical hands-on opportunity.”
What values do you get the most benefit from working with OAL?
“I find that working with OAL has been really useful, because they give some structure to the program. The systems that you have in place there really help us to kind of manage the process, your online systems, where we can book our EPA a great, you’ve been very clear to lay out the standards, that they all come together at the end.”
“I think I would say OAL is quite efficient. Our account manager who we work with has been really efficient. He’s so responsive. Whenever I’ve had a question he’s answered sometimes within hours, but generally on the same day, he’s really informative and helpful and that’s been great. That’s been really useful to kind of have that efficiency.”
What are the most important aspects of your relationship with your EPAO?
“I think a personal relationship, having one point of contact, one person who knows us and knows where we’re at and how to support us because our apprenticeships are in such different organizations from each other. I’ve got apprentices in schools, in a performing arts department in a school. I’ve got apprentices in tiny little art centres. I’ve got apprentices in some of the biggest west end theatres. I’ve got apprentices in small recording venues on the south coast. I’ve got apprentices in larger producing venues on the south coast.”
“That means that every single time I’m talking about an apprentice or planning an EPA, It is different. There are different elements to it. Although we’ve managed to make it fit within the standard, one of the things that’s really important is that the endpoint assessment organization knows us and understands the difference and how we have to be flexible with our employers. We have to be flexible with our apprentices. So that’s important for me, a personal, personalized relationship. I would really struggle if I had a different person to deal with every time I needed to talk to someone at OAL.”