Backstage breakthroughs: RSC Backstage Apprentices

‘I only knew creative arts apprenticeships existed because of my life coach, who was someone who wasn't offered through college – and I had to pay for the sessions myself.’ This is Olivia Creed, who is now an apprentice stage and props technician with the RSC, a position she'd never have considered if she'd just listened to her teachers. This is the experience of many of the RSC's apprentices who have ended up on one of very few creative apprenticeships on offer in the UK. Trainee venue manager George Holmes came to his apprenticeship (the second he has undertaken at the RSC) in a similar way. After having been swept up in the groupthink of believing he should go to university, he ended up studying Sociology for a term and finding that it wasn't for him. ‘After I left, I went back to my job in retail,’ he explains. ‘I wasn't looking for apprenticeships, but I applied for job alerts with the RSC and this came up.’