STUDENTS in a technical services course delivered through a partnership of Arts Centre Melbourne and City of Greater Bendigo in association with the Victorian Association of Performing Arts Centres, VAPAC, graduated from a technical skills course for theatre at The Capital on Tuesday 20 June.<\/p>\n
Twelve students from Regional Victoria undertook the 12-week Tech Connect Regional Victorian Training program in either Bendigo or Shepparton and received their certificates at the event, a program designed to combat a skills shortage in the industry.<\/p>\n
Bendigo Venues and Events, BV&E, team leader of technical services Stuart McKellar took a mental health component of the training to broaden his skillset.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a leader in the industry, I\u2019ve actually been supporting this since well before it started, and as chair of the VAPAC organisation and the tech managers side I\u2019ve always been looking out for training and we need to bring the skills up and we get a lot of green people coming through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust to broaden my skills and you always can learn something new, you might have done it before but do it again and learn another bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr McKellar said BV&E are always looking for more technical specialists.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us as a regional venue, getting skilled staff is really hard, but having this sort of training and being able to offer the opportunity for them to get those skills\u2026allows us then to train staff within our organisation so we\u2019re not so struggling to get the trained and experienced crew along,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Arts Centre Melbourne senior manager of technical training and development Murray Johnstone it had been a \u201c12-week hit-and-run\u201d for all involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is hard work, and it\u2019s hard work for the participants to get through that amount of training and assessment in that time and carry that on and really put that into use in the venues afterwards as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Arts Centre Melbourne manager of technical training and development Walter Ponce said undertaking the trainings were some of the \u201cmost rewarding\u201d work he\u2019s done in his entire career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is very much our bread and butter for the [Arts Centre Melbourne] RTO and it\u2019s really encouraging and great to get to this point in time in which we get to see people operating and smiling and having a good time and enjoying what it is that we do,\u201d said Mr Ponce.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been putting a lot of emphasis into the fact that we\u2019re human beings, we\u2019re not machines, we have creative endeavours and we also like to do technical stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the first time the course was held in Bendigo, and the third year of its running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STUDENTS in a technical services course delivered through a partnership of Arts Centre Melbourne and City of Greater Bendigo in association with the Victorian Association of Performing Arts Centres, VAPAC, graduated from a technical skills course for theatre at The Capital on Tuesday 20 June. Twelve students from Regional Victoria undertook the 12-week Tech Connect […]<\/p>\n