Why should you train as a performer in Brighton?
Why should you choose to train in Brighton? Find out in the words of our very own ICTheatre Brighton college Principal, Thomasina Unsworth.
It’s unique
Brighton is a unique place. It has its own brand of vibrancy, there is always something happening. There’s a buzzy and creative feeling welcoming to performers.
It’s close to London
It’s very close to London, so you can get into the capital and see shows, while it also means that we can get practitioners and industry professionals down from London very easily.
You can get on a bus and cross the Brighton easily too. You can even walk everywhere if you like! Stroll down to the sea if you just want to sit on the beach and have a think, plan, and dream a little.
It has everything you need
It’s all there for you – the activities, the artists, the beautiful little vintage shops, the cafes, the clubs, Brighton Festival, the theatres, the events, the open houses showing artwork.
It’s also one of the friendliest places in the country, and we’re very proud that we’ve got a Green MP, which until recently made us unique. We are a tolerant liberal society here on the south coast of England.
A fresh focus
ICTheatre Brighton is following a fresh focus. We’ve gathered a whole raft of industry people around the table – casting directors, agents, and performers, spending many hours talking about what it means to be contemporary.
We’ve asked them what has changed in the world of theatre, film, and television and what we need to do to address the training in the light of those changes.
A new approach to training
So, we have a three-way approach to training:
- Excellent delivery from practitioners working in all disciplines.
- A grounding in entrepreneurial skills allowing our students to develop their own work and market themselves.
- An emphasis on mental resilience, utilising timetabled sessions to ensure that students have coping strategies and life skills in preparation for entering what can at times be a testing profession.
It’s a holistic approach, placing the individual student as a unique creative artist, at the centre of everything that we do.
Training for the big screen
We do a lot of screen work right from the get-go, with acting for screen from week-one. This will develop into acting for video games and short videos, using the camera in all sorts of situations.
We also encourage our students to think outside the box. So, if you’re on the musical theatre course, you will have the opportunity to learn fundamental skills in puppetry, you will work with multimedia, you will do aerial skills, and much more.
Similarly on the acting pathway you will learn how to do voice overs, work on podcasts, collaborate with the film school to make short films, explore immersive and applied theatre, engage with a range of texts, and develop as a performer in our motion capture suite, an area with a wealth of employment opportunities.
Whichever pathway you are on, you will gain a thorough grounding in technique; to be adaptable you need to be excellently trained. This will provide you with the confidence to go on to explore all sorts of avenues and develop your own unique offer as a creative artist.
Become an entrepreneur
Going into the industry now, graduates also need a facility for entrepreneurism so that they can market themselves, organise social media and network. We teach our students about crowd funding and pitching, about forecasting and how to shape a concept and develop it, and where to go to publicise it.
There is a lot of collaboration between ICTheatre and the two other BIMM colleges in Brighton – Screen and Film School and Music. Our students are incredibly well prepared to adapt and respond to the demands of a changing landscape in the arts. In order for them to do their job well, first we must do ours.
Does this sound enticing? There’s still time to join ICTheatre Brighton in 2022, find out more or apply to join us.
