Novo Talent is our talent development programme for individuals at all stages of their career working across theatre in our region, and those supporting individuals to navigate their careers options.
We are committed to growing new talent in the North East and sustaining those already working here. Novo Talent supports individuals’ personal development and helps us build dynamic teams to realise our artistic ambitions. It feeds directly into our creative ambitions and is bespoke according to the scale of the production and the needs of our freelancers.
Three strands
Novo Talent aims to inspire people to work in theatre and help to ignite and sustain careers, contributing to a flourishing and representative workforce for theatre in the North East.
Inspire
We want to inspire people to work in theatre and change perceptions of the roles available and who can do them. We partner with secondary schools, further and higher education institutions to provide careers presentations, work experience, industry placements, and workshops through an ongoing programme.
Alongside co-creation opportunities in our artistic programme, we offer open rehearsals and visits during productions to highlight production and technical arts.
Ignite
We offer paid assistant or trainee roles within our productions with the aim of supporting individuals to develop skills and confidence in our industry. We give out 1 - 2 of these packages a year and they include:
External mentoring
Personal CPD budgets
Facilitated introductions to regional contacts.
Sustain
Our Sustain development packages recognise the difficulty in maintaining a freelance career in the North East. Alongside ethically benchmarked freelance contracts we offer 1 - 2 packages a year that include:
Development bursaries to support CPD, training or creative development of own work.
Free hot desk space
Facilitated introductions within a national network of contacts.
Novo Talent launched in 2023, since then we have:
Supported 7 freelancers beneficiaries.
Provided 48 hours of mentoring.
Engaged with 3 freelance mentors.
Awarded £3,000 in bursaries for freelancers to develop their own CPD.
Engaged with 5 schools and 3024 pupils across Northumberland.
Provided 7 work placements.
RESEARCH
In February 2023 Novo Theatre, formerly November Club, launched a survey for North East theatre freelancers at all stages of their career, working across performance, creative and production roles. We wanted to better understand the barriers to starting, developing and sustaining a freelance career in the North East, and the types of opportunities they felt would help support them.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the survey. This data has helped to shape Novo Talent and will also help us make a case for ongoing funding to help us better support the development of freelancers that work with us.
If you’d like us to keep you updated about the programme, you can sign up to our mailing list to get direct emails about opportunities.