Event Industry News: As the live events and creative industries flourish, employers in the sector need new, highly trained individuals to meet the needs of a booming industry. As such, they are increasingly looking for graduates with transferable workplace skills.
5 comments:
Hands-on learning is definitely far more beneficial than solely having the theoretical approach. However much you may have read and understood in your head, it’s not going to really click and you’re not going to really be able to problem solve and see how it all fits together until you are in the space trying to execute a task. So much of learning is about making mistakes and fixing them, which you can’t do it it’s all in your head. That’s why the setup of stagecraft especially is so valuable; we get to have the hands-on experience even if we don’t have the theoretical knowledge just yet. Ideally it would be both, but we’re more likely to retain the information later when it is formally taught if we have had the experience of seeing how it all plays out in the real world. That way we’re also used to the fast-paced and demanding environment of the field and are prepared for those scenarios in real life.
I couldn't agree more with this article. While the more advance things in technical theatre require at least some level of theory before practice can be attempted, I think almost all of the foundation stuff involving working in the entertainment industry should be practical only. I think that too often, people are sent to assist with crews without knowing the basics and the entire process slows down as a result. What good is theoretically knowing how to operate a tool if you've never done it? I can show you a video about how to buff a car but how is that going to teach you how to feel the tool and the way it is vibrating and making noise on the panel beneath it? At a certain temperature, automotive paint melts. Sure you could be given a number, but to actually get the panel to a certain temperature so that a scratch can be removed without melting the paint beneath? You're going to have to burn one or two panels.
I think in general it is good to have some practical working knowledge as opposed to just book training. This is especially important in theatre, events, live shows, etc. because no one event is like any other so you have to be adaptable. Going into the workforce and into on-site training as this article mentions is a huge way to expand your experience and learn what a job is really like. Unlocking creativity and discovering new technology are other strong arguments for an immersive training process. From my experience, learning the basics and studying the facts can only take you so far before you need actual trial and error in the moment to teach you the skills. I'm really on board with incorporating this type of training into the theatre field as early as possible and think it is super beneficial for young artists' careers.
I truly agree with this author's opinion about the necessity of hands-on training for the entertainment world. I can say that I gain a lot more knowledge from a combination of lecture and hands on. You can’t expect someone to perform a skill they’ve only ever been told about. I know from personal experience that things we learn in school, but don’t actually utilize or do make it less likely for you to retain that information. A quick google search reveals that people who do something, retain a much higher percentage of that knowledge than people who are simply lectured about it. I believe that our program at CMU does an okay job at having hands-on experiences. Obviously, the main hands-on experience we have are crew hours - but classes like scenery fabrication would be much more meaningful if we had built the things that we were talking about. Not being on zoom would also have helped with my personal retention.
This article obviously makes a ton of sense for us. I learn best by doing hands-on work. This is why I thrive when working on productions and hands-on projects that the school offers. I am constantly seeking ways to be hands on rather than being in lectures and doing pointless homework assignments. I am flying out during my tech for a show to Las Vegas to attend the LDI conference which is a live entertainment technology conference. Because of Covid, I have missed this for the past 3 years that I have been in school, but I am not missing this in person, hands-on, opportunity this year. This is the only way that we learn and the only way that we get better at anything. I am very grateful to be in a program with access to a bunch of resources to be able to give me hands-on experience with a lot of different things.
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