Interview: Bryan Banville on Learn Academy's event for entertainment artists 'This event is to help in supporting our fellow artists'

Theatre has always been an art that challenges those who pursue it - both in terms of creativity and in the form of steady work. Now that theatres are dark, artists find themselves looking for ways to use their skills to get a paycheck to support themselves through this uncertain period and beyond. Learn Academy, San Diego's longest and oldest running web developer boot camp has developed a program specifically tailored to help those in the arts thrive by using their talents in the tech industry. Learn Academy has an upcoming event on Monday, August 3rd at 12pm for people interested in learning more.

Bryan Banville is Learn Academy's Career Services Manager, as well as a proud member of the Actor's Equity Association (and a Craig Noel Award winning actor) and knows about life in the entertainment industry. Along with Learn Academy Founder Chelsea Kaufman, who has a background in theatrical arts including experience with New Village Arts Theatre, The Playwrights Project, and more, they designed this program to show how someone can have a tech career that supports an artistic life.

While the stereotype for tech may be logical, math based, and include few to no musical numbers, arts and coding share a solid foundation in storytelling and creating a reality out of something only imagined.

Bryan says it is that shared theatrical experience that made Learn Academy so excited to develop this event for theatre artists to find stability as a dual careerist. Someone who has stability in a job that also has the flexibility required for a life in the arts from front of the house, to backstage, and everywhere in between.

"One of the things Chelsea and I have been talking about for such a long time, is how the entertainment and arts industry has a lot of similar skill sets that are perfect for web development. There is a lot of creativity and a lot of problem solving which people in the entertainment industry are really good at. We started a dialogue as we saw what was happening during Covid in the entertainment industry and said maybe this is the time.

This event is to help in supporting our fellow artists."

The creativity, the drive to continue learning, creating, and knowing how to creatively collaborate are key artistic skills for storytelling, and for coding and programming. Which means that artists with those transferable skills can have a stable career and paycheck in tech without sacrificing an artistic life.

"We specialise in taking those transferable skills and helping people leverage that for positions in the tech industry. We get feedback from companies that say 'We can teach the technical skills, what we can't teach are these great transferable skills your students are bringing - strong collaboration and communication skills and having people who are organized and creatively solve problems.' These are skills people in the entertainment industry do on a daily basis and it's a great transfer, to bring them into being a dual careerist."

The event on Monday, "Leverage a Tech Career to Support Your Art" is free to anyone in the entertainment or entertainment adjacent industry that might be interested in learning more. The event includes a panel of speakers including a cinematographer and digital media producer, another is an actor, and another individual is in sound engineering and music who also has found success in tech.

"These three individuals will talk about how they transitioned into tech, skill sets they thought were really strong, and really just answer questions on how do you even start?

Hopefully, that is what we can share in this event, that it is fully possible to be a dual careerist and you don't have to give up being an artist because you need money. It's important to have those conversations with people that you don't need to fully sacrifice to have a career in the arts."

The Link to the event on Monday, August 3rd at 12pm PDT is https://www.meetup.com/LEARN-academy/events/272104430/

For more information on Learn Academy, their staff, and their programs you can visit their website and their social media channels.

Website: www.learnacademy.org

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LEARNacademy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sdlearn/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SDLEARN

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/sd-learn/

Photo credit: Geri Goodale

Photo one: Katie Banville, Jacob Narcy, Gerilyn Brault, Kimberly Moller, Scott Arnold, Emmanuel Young, and Matt Clarke

Photo 2: Jacob Narcy & Emmanuel Young

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