Do we need industry-specific vocational qualifications for technical skills?
Our industry is the most amazingly creative, spontaneous purveyor of the collective soul of the nation. From product launch to fringe theatre – from stadium rock’n’roll to circus, from contemporary dance to animation, television and film – we invent, we innovate, we learn.
Our development of creative talent is excellent, but there are limited options for education and development of technical talent. There are colleges which work hard to deliver technical training from a degree format – a challenge given the range of equipment and diversity of venues in the entertainment industry.
For those who cannot afford to go to university, there is a lack of recognised industry-specific qualifications to validate the training they receive on the job. National vocational qualifications sit within the educational frame-work to serve multiple industries, but few technicians working in live entertainment present these to employers and employers struggle to see their relevance.
Does this matter? We have survived without them – talented and driven people will always rise to the top and others fall away. But the quality of applicants and their ability to demonstrate they are fit to carry out specific tasks will always be a concern of employers, and the argument that qualifications limit the risks involved is a persuasive one.
The positives around creating qualifications which assess competence are numerous. The creation of industry-recognised standards enables new entrants to identify what they need to achieve if they wish to progress. They can hook their ambitions not just on identification with role models they work with, but link them to specialisms as they develop and go on to have these skills assessed and validated. For employers, it allows confidence in a tested level of competence that can assuage clients and insurers.
Qualifications don’t replace the interview process, but in recruitment would allow greater diversity of candidates – technical managers will tend to recruit someone from a venue/production company they understand rather than see the potential of someone with a less conventional work history. Qualifications can also allow movement between theatre, live event, manufacturers and broadcast if common units are shared and there is involvement from all sectors at conception.
But let’s also acknowledge the challenges. There is a high diversity of technical skills and kit in live events and entertainment which is constantly changing. Identifying what competent looks like means identifying the skills, most of which already exist in occupational standards; measuring them would be logistically challenging as assessment would have to be standardised to maximise access across the country.
Attracting highly skilled technical assessors to take part requires them to give up time for training. The government isn’t demanding that our technicians have CSCS cards, unless the workplace is on a construction site, and we haven’t even been able to agree an industry-wide health and safety or induction process which fits all venues and productions.
But still – could qualifications provide the framework to establish a consensus in relation to what ‘good’ looks like? Could the in-house, on-the-job-training which every employer delivers fit the requirements of the curriculum the industry sets so that every technician could, if they wished, attain recognition of their skills and experience?
Only if there is a shared vision and everyone is involved and committed – hearts, minds and pockets. Only if a technician shows they have achieved a particular qualification and it means something to the person recruiting them. No one company or organisation can do it alone, but there are opportunities to drive this forward if there is enough support, and perceived value in the cost of developing and paying for each certificate. An engineering level three NVQ costs more than £3,500 – can our employers and freelance technicians afford that, or can our industry afford not to agree a form of certifying competent people?
The alternative is that we carry on as we are with limited ability to prove competence… which is fine, right?