Audible, the Amazon owned audiobook company and LAMDA (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) announced in July 2018 a three year collaboration to develop the next generation of acting talent. They plan to develop talent through training programs and scholarships in audio entertainment and creating original audio plays with LAMDA acting students. The courses and workshops will aim to focus on audio skills and techniques such microphone techniques, creating voice reels, radio play performance, and career advice, along with funding new technology to support the ambition to improve audio skills. The partnership will also see Audible fund a scholarship for a student in need of financial assistance to complete LAMDA’s three year BA (Hons) Professional Acting course.
The plans are exciting and innovative and definitely demonstrate that LAMDA have their finger on the pulse, audiobooks and podcasts have seen a meteoric rise over recent years. Many believe they hit their peak years ago but the audio sector is booming with the number of podcasts fans steadily growing year on year, in the USA alone 50% of all US homes are podcast fans according to the Nielsen Podcast Insight report. And according to The Infinite Dial 26% (73 million) US citizens listen to podcasts every month. With ease of access through smart phones and home devices such as Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, along with the facts that podcasts are more tailored than radio, more convenient, can be advert free or at least have more relevant and targeted adverts, can be paused, rewound, saved, shared etc etc… it becomes easy to see why they are continuing to grow in popularity.
The principal of LAMDA, Joanna Read said: “At LAMDA we are committed to providing students with diverse and varied training which will set them up for a career in an industry which is constantly evolving. This new collaboration will offer our talented students an exciting opportunity to develop skills within an increasingly growing field of performing arts.”
And Tracey Markham, territory manager at Audible UK, added: “We are hugely excited to partner with LAMDA to support and train young actors. We are honoured to work with the world’s finest actors, and we are passionate about nurturing the next generation of talent. Now we look forward to working with LAMDA to inspire and train today’s most promising young actors and to bring new voices to our global audience of listeners.”
Here at HBA we are hugely excited by both the opportunity the new collaboration brings to students, the fantastic projects that are sure to evolve from the partnership and also by the rapidly growing landscape of audio and voice. The possibilities are massively exciting and the creativity is limitless. We are super excited about how we can work with students to help prepare them and train them in voice and audio acting. We are also working on some exciting projects and partnerships of our own here in the North West and around Greater Manchester, with schools, actors and audio professionals that could deliver some very innovative and exciting endeavours.
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