New Agency Aims to Plug Region’s Event Management Skills and Staff Gap
19 September 2024
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO WEDS 2 OCTOBER
A new training provider is taking action to fill the critical skills gap in the West of England’s live arts and events sector by offering fully funded bootcamp places to adults interested in learning about effective planning and management, routes to a sustainable career and work at festivals.
Backed by WECA (the West of England Combined Authority), MUTI is collaborating with leading cultural organisations to design and deliver cutting edge industry led training not available anywhere else. This involves working with a range of creative industry experts, venues and producers to find and develop the people needed by a wide range of events – from big outdoor festivals, via theatre, music gigs and celebrations to conferences and charity fund-raisers.
MUTI co-director Nick Young-Wolfe says: “From our considerable experience in theatre, education and festivals, we know that whenever audiences come together for a live event there needs to be professionals behind the scenes making it all run smoothly, safely and, often, adding the creative magic.”
Explaining the agency’s name and drivers, Nick, originally from South Africa, added: “MUTI is an African word meaning magic/ healing, referring to the power of live connection which is the MUTI for all of us, and is the source of the company’s passion for supporting the sector.”
A successful first project with Disney has just finished. It saw six young local Theatre Technicians placed at Bristol Hippodrome to assist on the recent production ALADDIN as part of its first UK tour.
To follow, MUTI is running two bootcamps this Autumn – both open to applicants aged 19+, living in Bath, Bristol, NE Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, and prepared to commit to one day’s training a week for nine weeks.
Partners will include Watershed in Bristol, Super Culture of Weston-super-Mare and St Paul’s Carnival, Bristol, and will be for those wanting a career as creative producers – the people in charge of time-tabling, managing budgets, meeting legal requirements, team coordination and more.
Applications for bootcamp places are open now and can be made by visiting www.muti.live.
MUTI is also keen to hear from organisations interested in working with the agency on other training and employment initiatives, including paid apprenticeships, such as its new Event Assistant Apprenticeships scheme.
The company’s other co-director Kate Hartoch says: “To build on the positive reputation of the sector, and keep high standards of delivery and health and safety, the sector needs to invest in training and workforce development. There is work out there for event producers, festival crew and freelancers but survey after survey points to the need for more to be trained up and to be shown how to build successful and rewarding careers. MUTI aims to fill these gaps.”
For more information and keep up to date with MUTI news and courses, see www.muti.live or find/ follow MUTI via its Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. We also invite you to message fiona@superculture.com
MUTI’s current programme is being supported by funding from the West of England Combined Authority (https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk); Arts Council England (https://www.artscouncil.org.uk) and the UK’s Government’s innovation agency, Innovate UK (https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk) /