In February 2020, Access Creative College took over the apprenticeship provision from NCCI (National College Creative Industries), with a focus on events, creative and cultural apprenticeships. We have nurtured a strong desire to expand into offering music apprenticeships to complement our current apprenticeship and college-based offer thus creating industry-relevant progression opportunities for students studying at one of our eight campuses, and providing a great alternative route to going to university.
Summer 2021 saw the acquisition of dBs Institute of Sound and Digital Technologies, growing our course provision into Higher Education (Levels 4-7). As a group we have been working closely together to plan for the new Level 4 ART apprenticeship; and the expertise of our apprenticeship team at NCCI, the invaluable experience of music production from ACC, and the knowledge and understanding of music production and audio technology in HE from dBs have all played a part in making this happen.
Our Head of Employer Partnerships, Katie Bambridge, has been working closely with employers to understand how this apprenticeship can work within the industry and how we can adapt the delivery to suit individual employers. Working with studios and broadcasters, we are overwhelmed with the thirst from the industry for this apprenticeship.
Not only has the response from employers been staggeringly positive, but we have also had an abundance of enquiries from young people wanting to get into the music industry. There has also been a massive take up from applicants choosing to study our Level 3 Studio and Live Sound and Music Production courses with over 600 students across the country studying these subjects at Level 3, creating a future pipeline of new talent for the industry.
We are currently working behind the scenes to develop the curriculum and interview for our future Industry Practitioner for Assistant Recording Technician, and plan to be set to deliver this new apprenticeship from April 2022.
If you are interested in finding out more, please contact Katie Bambridge on katie.bambridge@accesscreative.ac.uk.
