Your Local High School Needs You

We enjoy working with our local schools and are particularly proud to be involved with the arts curriculum at Northwood High School, the school my daughter attends.  They are finishing up a series of special events this week and we applaud them for their hard work.

Periodically, I have pointed out the phenomenon I call the “graying” of the concert production industry.  Lots of hands-on techs who got their start in sound and lighting began their careers in the 1970’s and ’80’s and are now looking at retirement or career changes.  Unfortunately, there are not a lot of kids ready to take their places.

If you read the trade journals that cover the concert production industry,  you know that a very high percentage of the articles feature technicians in their 50’s or even 60’s.

My work at Northwood High confirms this trend.  Northwood has a newly renovated auditorium with state of the art sound and lighting systems.  Twenty years ago, there would have been students crawling all over each other to get a chance to learn to operate this equipment.

Not today. Northwood has hundreds of kids involved in band, dance and drama but almost no students who want to work backstage or in the production booth.  They simply don’t see it as a college or career track.

We have recently developed a series of “how to” animations related to teaching technical theatre skills, along with a set of printed guides.

It is our hope little things like this, along with our involvement in training students and teaching tech skills, will open the eyes of some of these high school students to the possibilities of an exciting career path that will soon have lots of employment opportunities.

If you have technical skills and are making a career change, give some thought to sharing all you’ve learned with your local high school arts program.

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