Manchester’s nascent Factory International has announced a host of of new training programmes and education partnerships on offer this year through the Factory Academy.
The academy, based around the soon to open creative space, invites people from all backgrounds to become the producers, technicians and arts professionals of tomorrow and aims to play a major role in further diversifying the creative and cultural sector.
During the 2021/22 term, over 250 local people benefitted from the award-winning training programmes, with new courses for the 2023 term to include a Producer Pathways programme created in partnership with Power Up Agency. The course will create 20 learning placements, with half of the students progressing on to fill 10 living-wage paid apprenticeship roles which will provide unrivalled hands-on access to industry experience.
Two of the apprentices will go on to secure a full-time 12-month contract at Factory International helping to create some of the first works at Manchester’s new world-class venue. Applications for this course will go live in spring.
This year will also see the launch of Future Cultural Leaders, a fully-funded 12-week course inviting local people to work alongside renowned Northern creative and cultural leaders, from Cultural Directors to Policy Makers to receive bespoke leadership training and connect with industry professionals. Further details to be announced in spring.
A new partnership with Salford College will contribute to the delivery of the new Factory Academy courses, where local people with little or no industry experience can apply for fully-funded training to work in Manchester’s ever-growing creative and cultural industry.
The partnership will help embed Factory International within the city region’s creative education offering, and is set to create mutual, beneficial pathways to arts education and resources for students at Factory Academy and Salford College – which is open to students from across Greater Manchester.
Factory Academy students will benefit from access to the college’s creative facilities including theatres, studios and multimedia spaces, while students at the college will gain access to work experience opportunities at Factory International and employment links.
Also new for 2023 is the Factory Schools programme, designed to improve young people’s health and wellbeing through participation in creative and cultural activity. It will see Factory International working with 35 secondary schools across Greater Manchester to deliver workshops, digital creative learning resources, and interactive art projects, and follows a pilot project in 2022 that saw artists partnered with local schools. This will help to inspire and support young people to work towards viable careers in the arts.
The latest opportunities are part of Factory International’s ongoing commitment to delivering 1,500 fully funded training places over a five-year period, with figures showing that 65 per cent of all those who have participated in Factory Academy courses so far have been from an under-represented group or from a low socio-economic background.
The new-for-2023 training and skills programme comes as national research shows that the working-class arts workforce has halved in the past four decades, whilst a study by the Centre for Cultural Value also found that women, people of colour, and disabled individuals were the most impacted by job and income losses in the arts and culture sector as a result of the pandemic.
Randel Bryan, executive director at Factory International, said: “2023 will be a time of enormous change in Manchester’s creative and cultural industries with the opening of Factory International set to bring direct, accessible and tangible routes into the industry.
“We want the people of Manchester to really take ownership of this space, to feel invited, connected and empowered by the opportunities that a world-class arts venue can bring to our city and the lives of the people who live here.”
As well as providing new skills and training opportunities throughout 2023, Factory International will continue to employ directly from its training school talent pool as part of an enormous recruitment drive that will create hundreds of new jobs in the Northern creative sector.
Around 142 new permanent roles have already been filled at the organisation since 2018, with a further 450 new jobs being recruited ahead of the venue’s opening this summer. 40 posts at Factory International have been filled by Factory Academy alumni.
