Government economic policy is not exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to see us commenting on, however, buried deep within last week’s Budget was the news that the National Theatre had been awarded the funding to allow it to build a new state-of-the-art facility to provide the time and space to invest in training “the workforce of tomorrow,” by offering a wide variety of skills pathways. And why should this be interest to Trowbridge Town Hall Trust? Well, as the National Theatre said in response to the Budget announcement:
“The funding will strengthen our nationwide partnerships through an expansion of our skills work, launching the National Theatre Skills Centre which will help to address the known skills gaps in the sector.”
As a member of the NT’s Theatre Nation Partnership, the new Skills Centre will allow us to share the experience and learning from the Public Acts initiative we participated in last year, nurturing technical skills through our next, upcoming Theatre Outreach Project, that can lead to far more immersive training opportunities offered through the Skills Centre.
This is what we mean by developing career pathways of the highest quality.