THE eponymous host of Later…with Jools Holland will meet students and leading industry representatives at the £13m state-of-the-art technical training and rehearsal facility for the performing arts industry and home of The National Skills Academy for Creative & Cultural’s Annual Conference on 6 and 7 March.
In a career spanning more than 40 years, from playing pubs in the East End docks as a teenage greaser, to the meteoric rise of his Seventies band Squeeze, to co-hosting the cult hit show The Tube in the Eighties, to leading his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, performing in the Queen’s Jubilee Concert and selling millions of records throughout, it is his passion for music that has made Jools Holland a doyen of the music scene. Awarded an OBE in 2003 for his services to the UK music industry, he is a role model for generations of live music performers and aficionados.
The UK’s music and theatre industry is world-class, and therefore needs world-class training. In response to an identified need for over 6,000 new jobs in these growing industries by 2017, Creative & Cultural Skills made the case to develop a large scale technical training and rehearsal centre in Purfleet, Essex, as part of a major regeneration project in the Thames Gateway.
The Backstage Centre has been funded by Thurrock Council, Arts Council England, the Skills Funding Agency, and the Homes and Communities Agency. It is a large scale space for hire, providing the capacity to rehearse, install, develop and train.
