ScreenSkills pivots to digital. As the production world is heavily impacted by Covid 19 and its implications, ScreenSkills moves to a full digital delivery. Central to that is the creation of the free Basic Covid Awareness online training programme. The step-by-step course is designed to keep production workers and their environments as safe as possible and allow people to receive industry-approved guidance in safety precautions and actions to ensure a swift return to production work.
“This training is designed to help everyone on a production keep themselves, their colleagues and their environment as safe as possible in the face of the new challenges presented by the coronavirus. We want to support the UK’s screen industries to continue to make great film and television by providing simple tools and information so that the risks are minimised and managed.”
The programme, created with the expert guidance of the NHS-supporting Skills for Health and industry safety consultant, First Option, ends with a test that provides an industry-recognised certificate for those who complete the training. It soon became mandated at production companies across the UK and has seen more than 85,000 complete the training since inception.
Further e-learning was developed to compliment this training and designed especially for HODs and production Covid supervisors in addition to online resources offering guidance, support and training to those affected by the pandemic.
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The year also saw the High-end TV Skills Fund launch a new Leadership and Management training initiative to support those with managerial responsibilities on productions. Designed for those in high-end TV (HETV) production, post and visual effects (VFX), the training is to help them get the best out of their teams and address issues such as underperformance, unconscious bias and bullying and bad behaviour. The popular training suite became mandatary training for all heads of production and leaders of scripted productions at Sky within six months and has since been extended to those working in animation, children’s and unscripted TV as well as being mandated by Sky.
Read more: How ScreenSkills' Leadership and Management training helped production coordinator Virginia Bonet