Welcome to our brand new ELAM blog. Every Friday you can expect all of our news and updates about what has been happening at ELAM. We hope you enjoy it!
The past two weeks have been all about industry at ELAM. We were fortunate enough to be invited to take part in our founding partner, Universal Music Group’s brand new Amplify U programme. Amplify U is a pilot scheme which brought together young people from across 5 organisations, ELAM, Brit School, Small Green Shoots, Limitless and Cat’s Mother for two weeks of incredible work experience. 40 of our Music and Film and Television trainees have spent the past two weeks working across five departments on live industry briefs as well as having talks from external industry leaders including a full day session with Stevie Wonder’s manager! They also spent a day at iconic London venue Roundhouse where they were treated to an industry panel and Q&A exploring how to produce a live event - they heard from industry leaders from WME, The Royal Albert Hall, Precise Live and Roundhouse. The day culminated in an exclusive invite to U Music, Universal’s annual celebration and Christmas party. The highlight was a live performance from the one and only Flo where we saw our two beloved music alumni, Stella and Renee, absolutely dazzling with their performance. And the work experience wasn’t just for film and music trainees. The whole of Year 13 games trainees joined them last Friday for an exclusive tour of The Engine Room, Universal’s internal creative studio where they were given a live brief and will return next year to have their work reviewed by the team. The two weeks culminated in a celebration event where ELAM rapper N3 and alumni Norika performed.
In other news, this week we are so proud of our music alumni Layyah, who after seriously impressing all of the judges for the past six weeks was crowned the winner of BBC’s Rap Game and impressively is the first female winner of the show. Huge congratulations Layyah. She follows in the footsteps of music alumni Ruben, J Clarke who was also a finalist on the show two seasons ago.
Finally, on Wednesday we also hosted our annual careers carousel event for current trainees wishing to explore career options available to them post-ELAM. The event welcomed over 14 universities and higher education providers, industry professionals from many of our partners including Ridley Scott Associates, Universal Music Group and Sports Interactive, and ASK Apprenticeship Service. What a week!