PRODUCTION FUTURES
SHURE PARTNERS EDUCATORS WORKING GROUP Shure collaborates with the Association of Sound Designers in the name of education.
In 2020, Peter Rice, Course Leader for Theatre Sound at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and member of the Association of Sound Designers, created a new arm to the Association. Named the Educators Working Group, the aim was to consolidate the minds and experience of various educators and engineers to answer the simple question; what is expected of new graduates and what skills are highly sought after by the industry? “Before I took up my role at RCSSD, I was working at the Young Vic Theatre,” began Rice. “Back then I knew most of the other engineers at all the West End theatres and it was a real community, but when I moved into education, a similar community of lectures
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didn’t seem to exist between other Higher Education establishments.” Rice mused that this could be down to the fact that many of these establishments saw themselves as competitors. “It’s always been mine, and many others’, opinion that we’d all benefit from talking to one another about our different practice and opinions on how we should train people.” This issue has become even more important as one of the knock-on effects of COVID-19 has been a dramatic reduction in legacy crew, with individuals moving on, leading to a potential shortage of experienced workers to meet the demand of the live events industry. It was this concern that brought about the new arm of the ASD, creating a united voice
for educators to then reach out to both rental houses and manufacturers and to make sure the students are given the best possible start once they leave higher education. One of the first success stories has been bringing on Shure to openly collaborate with the Educators Working Group. “Jack Drury from Shure has already done a few sessions with us where we’ve got to invite a number of students from various establishments,” enthused Rice. “Incentives like this are invaluable to us as educators, as specialists like Jack have such a knowledge of certain elements of audio that we simply would not have the time or resources to obtain. Such sessions are great for manufacturers like Shure, who then begin