BRITANNIA ROW PRODUCTIONS TRAINING LTD RECEIVES LIFELINE GRANT FROM GOVERNMENT’S £1.57BN CULTURE RECOVERY FUND

All BRPT training courses are written, kept up-to-date and delivered by tutors who are industry practitioners working at the top tier of the industry. BRPT has developed and offered a range of courses which have allowed for part-time study through to intensive full-time courses and a 3-year BSc Hons degree.

BRPT students book onto its courses for a variety of reasons. Some already make a living from live audio and simply want to increase their knowledge in certain areas. The motivation for most students is to be enabled to enter the industry. BRPT has seen hundreds of its graduates secure their first jobs in the industry, with many more rising quickly to senior roles.

In March 2020, the Company’s training activities were, and have remained, suspended due to the restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Being awarded a Culture Recovery Grant, BRPT now has the ability to offer all potential students to study with BRPT at a distance, online. The grant is a lifeline for the company. Over the next five months, most of the grant will go to audio and video professionals who will be working on producing the online training - and provide them with much-needed income. Marketing of the online courses will begin in late November with the first courses scheduled to be available in January 2021.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden comments: “This is more vital funding to protect cultural gems across the country, save jobs and prepare the arts to bounce back. Through Arts Council England we are delivering the biggest ever investment in the arts in record time. Hundreds of millions of pounds are already making their way to thousands of organisations.

“These awards build on our commitment to be here for culture in every part of the country.”

Chair, Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, says: “Culture is an essential part of life across the country, helping to support people’s wellbeing through creativity and self-expression, bringing communities together, and fuelling our world class creative industries. 

“This latest set of awards from the Culture Recovery Fund builds on those announced recently and will help hundreds of organisations to survive the next few months, ensuring that the cultural sector can bounce back after the crisis. We will continue doing everything we can to support artists and cultural and creative organisations, with further funding to be announced in the coming weeks.”

BRPT’s Managing Director, Mike Lowe, furthers: “I see the Culture Recovery Grant as not only being a lifeline for our training efforts and for those involved in the project over the coming months, but for the whole industry. In normal times, sound engineers and technicians retire; others move on to a whole variety of different roles such as production, technical support or in development for audio equipment manufacturers. This shrinkage in the talent / labour pool at the top end is fed by the pipeline of young people, equipped with the required knowledge and skills, entering the workplace at the beginning of their careers. This pipeline has already been broken by a year. The prognosis is such that it will be broken by at least two years. The natural rate at which sound engineers and technicians move on is accelerating due to the current crisis. Some with family responsibilities are re-training to work in other industries which can provide more immediate and reliable income at this time. Others, who planned to retire in the next two to three years are taking retirement early.

“When our industry is in a position to return to normal levels of activity, the activity will be big. All artists, promoters and venues want to and need to get back to work. Live events industry workers are needed to allow them to do so. Being able to offer COVID-safe distance learning should help enormously with this oncoming problem. By moving from largely ‘physical’ training to largely ‘virtual’ training, we will reduce our cost of delivery and hence reduce costs for students. This reduction applies not only to course fees but to travel, accommodation and sustenance costs. In turn, we hope to see opportunities for a more diverse range of students than ever before.

“In the live events industry’s darkest hour, the Culture Recovery Grants and Loans offer some very welcome light and some very exciting opportunities.”

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. It has set out a strategic vision in Let’s Create envisioning that by 2030 England will be a country in which the creativity is valued and given the chance to flourish, where everyone has access to a remarkable range of high quality cultural experiences. The investment of public money from Government and The National Lottery will help support the sector and deliver this vision. www.artscouncil.org.uk

Following the Covid-19 crisis, the Arts Council developed a £160 million Emergency Response Package, with nearly 90% coming from the National Lottery, for organisations and individuals needing support. It is one of several bodies administering the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund and unprecedented support package of £1.57 billion for the culture and heritage sector. 

Britannia Row Productions Training (BRPT) is the training arm of Britannia Row Productions, a live audio company which has been providing professional audio equipment, sound engineers and technicians to major artists and events for 40 years. As a live audio training specialist delivering world class audio training - from within the industry, for the industry, by the industry - it is an employer as well as audio education provider. BRPT understands fully what qualities and skills employers are looking for in sound engineers and technicians, training course attendees to be the best the industry has to offer.