ACC Plymouth

Words by Matt Thompson.

Plymouth. A beautiful, historic city by the sea, now the home of our newest centre, ACC Plymouth.

Plymouth offers far more than just being a seaside town. Set in an area of outstanding natural beauty, right next to Dartmoor National Park and in the middle of two of the most globally renowned areas of the UK (Cornwall and Devon), the city is an oasis for residents and visitors alike looking for lively hustle and bustle after quiet country walks.

And of course, with a city comes a thriving and unique culture. Plymouth is no exception with a wide variety of venues, clubs and performance spaces that were a key cog in the 90s and 00s electronic music scene, now led from the front by The Depo, a 750 capacity venue that has more recently hosted Pete Tong and Serum.

A place with cultural heritage such as Plymouth is ideal then for creative industries education and dBs touched down in 1998 to launch bespoke and industry focused Higher Education in music production and technology. Over the next two decades they’ve contributed to the creative scene and wider development of Plymouth, establishing themselves as a vital part of the community in an up-and-coming city with shared goals and big ideas.

This year, ACC went looking for a partner company that would allow us to evolve into new areas and expand our offering to students and dBs appeared with similar ideals and a shared background, experience and passion. As part of our new partnership with them, we are now running Further Education (post-16 courses) hand in hand with dBs at ACC Plymouth. We’re excited to be able to offer courses in Music Performance, Music Production, Games Art and Games Development initially with more to be announced in the future.

Any student that signs up for one of our new music FE courses at Plymouth will have access to state of the art recording studios, DJ suites and iMac suites loaded with key music-making software such as Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Native Instruments and Logic Pro. Alongside that they also have access to all the physical equipment needed to make professional grade recordings, from mixing consoles to a vast range of microphones for various applications.

Games students will be able to work in our ‘Games Lab’ facilities, focusing on various aspects of games development using cutting edge technology.

Access Creative College is a national educational institution and with that comes even more benefits for students at our new Plymouth centre. You will have access to our ACC Live careers programme (check out our careers feature in this issue for more details) and a national network of like-minded creatives to network and collaborate with, all studying curriculums created off the back of 30 years of direct creative industries experience.

We can’t wait to see how our new Plymouth students get on. Look out for a lot more from the newest member of the ACC family in the coming months!

To find out more about studying at ACC Plymouth, visit accesscreative.ac.uk/ locations/plymouth.