BIMM Institute London and Panasonic KAIROS Training Academy Network.

BIMM INSTITUTE LONDON: EVENT MANAGEMENT

BIMM Institute London lecturer, Alice James and graduate, Grace Brennan disclose the value of investing in the education system, the gender split of classrooms and highlight the challenges events management graduates face in 2022.

Words: Jacob Waite Photos: Alice James and Grace Brennan

Aside from her daily duties as Head of Production for AEG Presents, Alice James lectures in Event Management at BIMM Institute London, teaching students a range of touring and live events focussed modules such as event sustainability, crowd psychology and management, event logistics and operations, and event concept and design, among other subjects.

“As a student I wanted to learn from someone actively working in the industry, as opposed to those who worked in the industry a decade ago,” James began, citing her decision to reinvest in the education sector.

“What BIMM does is refreshing. The majority of module leaders teaching specific topics all work in the industry, and we teach part time, while juggling our day-to-day jobs,” she said, explaining that this affords lecturers and guest speakers to provide students with hands-on experience at festival sites and impart their classroom knowledge in the field. “A lot of the lectures at are theoretical because it has to be taught in the classroom, however, we try to create opportunities for students to get hands-on – doing site visits, work experience, masterclasses from production managers, tour managers, stage managers, etc. to deliver an insight into the modern, touring environment,” James commented.

“The amazing thing about BIMM is the endless amount of opportunities afforded to you, from door work at gigs tutors were putting on to working for festivals,” Grace Brennan, a recent BIMM Institute London Event Management graduate commented.

“Networking is important in this industry, so having lecturers, tutors and a wide range of visiting industry insiders has helped with my career progression massively.”

Brennan is one of many female graduates from the BIMM Institute London Event Management course. “The gender split really is quite astonishing,” noted James. “Every event

management class I teach is about 60/70% female, sometimes even more. We are starting to see a trend of more people coming through that is predominantly female. Whether those people go into production, we don’t know, but it is encouraging to have a larger pool of trained graduates skilled enough to join the live music production and events industry.”

Brennan added: “It’s interesting because now I’m working in the industry, I’m often sought after by companies to achieve a gender balance quota. However, when I started studying at BIMM Institute London it was predominantly male in most areas of the live events and production industry, which was initially nerveracking – now it’s working in my favour which is rather bizarre.”

Despite the expansion of live music and events courses in recent years, James and Brennan cite economic barriers, a lack of paid work and non-traditional career pathways as the biggest challenges students and graduates face today. “I always encourage students to get work experience while they’re studying, so by the time they leave they’ve already accumulated a wealth of experience,” James said. “A lack of paid work experience is also a barrier for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This exists in other sectors and while I’ve seen record labels address this issue, I’m not aware of the production sector or the companies creating an easier route.”

Having stage managed at Latitude Festival and BBC Introducing over summer, Brennan plans to return to festival fields in 2022 as well as promoting shows for a small venue in Camden, while working as an Event Administrator at EMS Events.

“The pros of BIMM have been the opportunities I have been afforded. I’ve got a qualification, spent four years learning, experienced some amazing projects and made some great memories.” www.bimm.ac.uk/london

Opposite: Alice James. Above: Grace Brennan.

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PANASONIC KAIROS TRAINING ACADEMY NETWORK

Anna Arkatova discusses Panasonic’s latest training incentives.

Panasonic Connect Product Marketing Manager, Anna Arkatova,; Managing Director, AED Display at AED Group, Thierry Heldenbergh; Creative Technology’s Sam Hatcher

Last year, Panasonic announced the KAIROS Training Academy Network to train operators to get the best from its live production platform. KAIROS offers an open software architecture system for video switching. The academies have been created in partnership with partners across Europe and the UK including Creative Technology (London and Sweden), AED (Belgium), VMB (Spain),KST Moschkau and Lang (Germany) with a number still in the pipeline.

“We believe those trained in our products and solutions are more likely to use them,” began Panasonic Connect Product Marketing Manager, Anna Arkatova. “We regularly host in-person and virtual training sessions with partners and end-users.”

This continued to be the case following the release of KAIROS. “We want operators and directors to push KAIROS to its limits and unlock more creative possibilities. We approached a number of partners to set up training academies in their offices, so that people can get hands-on with KAIROS.”

Arkatova highlighted the key features of KAIROS, such as Creator, the platform’s Graphic User Interface, which enables the management of an unlimited number of video layers. “Creator has been designed to enable directors and vision mixers with varied levels of experience to be able to deliver engaging content or set-up complex systems with limited training time,” Arkatova commented.

KAIROS is not just a conventional vision mixer but utilises a variety of IT ecosystems based on COTS technology, with expandable functions and links to external devices.

As a result, while in its most basic of configuration it supports IP video switching, it also has the capability to sit at the centre of a live production as a pixel processor or screen manager and cover all functions with a latency of just a single frame.

Creative Technology’s Sam Hatcher discussed some of the UK-based training sessions. “We have trained KAIROS operators for Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 as well as trained freelance technical directors, video engineers and operators at Creative Technology.”

Participants of the training sessions can expect to learn about the “revolutionary ecosystem” offered by KAIROS.

“We enable those that join the training sessions to have a greater understanding of how a software-defined switcher differs from more traditional options,” he stated.

Hatcher continued to explain how during the sessions, attendees were given an overview of the “Photoshop-style” graphic user interface, and then encouraged those undertaking the course to get stuck into a range of self-lead tasks that show you how to configure and operate the many features offered by KAIROS.

“I’m convinced that with these new IT platforms like KAIROS we can be a lot more flexible in the future with remote production,” Thierry Heldenbergh, Managing Director, AED Display at AED Group commented.

“The new transitions to IP platforms is really important because we strongly believe that will be the future, not only for events but also in fixed installations,” Heldenbergh said. “In this aspect training is very important as we need operators that feel confident about the system and feel at ease.”

For more information about KAIROS training schemes, contact Panasonic partners directly. Creative Technology UK: kairos@ctlondon.com Creative Technology Sweden: www.ct-sweden.com AED: Info.display@aedgroup.com and www.aedgroup.com VMB: www.visualmediabroadcast.com KST Moschkau: www.kst-moschkau.de/geschaeftsbereiche/ kst-academy