Young Kirklees women urged to apply for exciting music studio opportunities
Sep 06
- YSWN launches two paid traineeships to boost women in the music industry
- Huddersfield’s BASSment Studios and Greenmount Studios in Leeds teaching skills
- Rare opportunity is open to women* aged 18-25 living in Kirklees
Women* in Kirklees with their sights set on the music industry have an exciting new opportunity to take their first steps towards their chosen career.
Yorkshire Sound Women Network (YSWN) is launching two trainee opportunities for young women living in Kirklees who want to gain real-life experience of working in a recording studio. The organisation, a non-profit Community Interest Company based in Huddersfield, has teamed up with BASSment Studios in Huddersfield and Greenmount Studios in Leeds to offer two paid internships that will give trainees a valuable first step into the world of music production.
The internships have been created as part of YSWN’s mission to provide better opportunities for women within the music industry, combating a gender gap which means that currently fewer than 5 percent of ‘behind the glass’ studio sound engineers and only 10 per cent of undergraduate music technology students nationally are women. The organisation’s own research uncovered a similar situation in Yorkshire, with around 7 in 10 of recording studios surveyed across the region being entirely male environments.
Each successful applicant will get hands-on experience in assisting with the day-to-day business of a busy recording studio, shadowing sound engineers as they record and mix bands, helping with studio maintenance and learning about production from members of staff.
The chosen trainees will have a real love of and enthusiasm for music and how it’s made, and while previous experience with a digital audio workstation (DAW) is welcomed. Instead, applicants should demonstrate that they have a positive attitude and are willing to learn all they can about how studios work.
To make the opportunities accessible to as many eligible women as possible, each placement is for 16 days in total, worked flexibly between September and December this year and comes with a £2,000 bursary (including travel expenses). The opportunity is supported by Kirklees Council via the Leeds City Region Business Rates Pool.
‘This is a fantastic opportunity to get some valuable, real-world experience of working in a music studio – _an area where we know that employment opportunities for women can be all too scarce,_’ says Heidi Johnson, YSWN Development Manager. ‘YSWN is delighted to be able to partner with BASSment Studios and Greenmount Studios to begin to rectify the gender gap with these paid trainee opportunities.’
How to apply
Visit https://bit.ly/2Lhph6C via the YSWN website at yorkshiresoundwomen.com to download full details of each placement and how to apply, or email info@yorkshiresoundwomen.com to request the information. Please note this is a positive action paid trainee opportunity aimed at women and non-binary people aged 18-25 years old. Applicants must be currently resident in Kirklees. The closing date for applications is 12 noon on Monday 9 September 2019.
*The opportunities are open to cis- and transgender women and gender non-binary/non-conforming people.
