Professionals from across the audio industry were at Metropolis Studios this week for the launch of the JAMES Approved Apprenticeship Framework. Following the announcement made in our newsletter last month (http://www.allstudios.co.uk/blog/204) Audio Pro International reports on the initiative a collaboration between JAMES (Joint Audio Media Education Support) Creative & Cultural Skills and City & Guilds with support from the Music Producers Guild (MPG) and APRS which aims to give young people fresh opportunities to get started in the recording industry “by providing them with the key skills that potential employers look for while providing a career pathway within and across the music industry.” The scheme comes into effect in September 2013. The new qualifications are based on the recently developed National Occupational Standards set by the music industry for work in sound engineering and music technology. Attendees were treated to speeches from a wide range of speakers including Ed Vaizey minister for Culture Communications & Creative Industries; Catherine Large co-CEO of Creative & Cultural Skills; Vic Grimes regional NSA director; Phil Harding chairman of JAMES and producer Mark Rose who along with Tony Platt led the development team. “I’ve been personally involved in the development programme for some years now” said Vaizey. “Mark and Phil came to see me to talk about their frustration at the lack of apprenticeship programmes and a set of qualifications that were relevant for this industry. It struck me that it was a deeply obvious point that if you wanted to put together a qualification that was relevant for the recording industry you should talk to the people working in it who could talk about the exact type of skills they needed. “We’re big fans in Government of apprentices and apprenticeship schemes. In the last few years we’ve really seen these schemes embed themselves as a key part of our education culture and people are taking them more and more seriously. “What JAMES City & Guilds and Creative & Cultural Skills have done is part of the UK Music Skills Academy launched last week (July 9th 2013) which brings together a network of everyone involved in music training up and down the country which I think is a fantastic achievement.” Mark Rose added: “Sound engineering as a subject is now being taken more seriously it’s not just seen as a hobby any more but a profession. Over the years we have seen a huge and variable dilution of training that is deemed to be acceptable. “We all like to house train our own recruits so apprenticeships are an ideal fit for the music creative and digital industries. There is an awful lot of ‘hire and fire’ going on in music at the moment; the music industry does need to grow up a little bit and this goes a long way towards that and towards offering alternative recruitment drives into our industry that are currently not there and they haven’t been there because there hasn’t been the support in the past.” For more information on the initiative visit the JAMES website here.
