Spotlight on Production Arts at Guildhall Young Artists

Guildhall Young Artists (GYA) King’s Cross offers students the opportunity to learn backstage skills through the Production Arts course. This course gives young creatives aged 14 to 18 specialist training and hands-on experience in key areas such as lighting, sound, stage management and scenic arts. 

During rehearsals for the 2025 GYA King's Cross showcase at Milton Court Concert Hall, we caught up with two current GYA Production Arts students, Antonia and Lux, to hear about their experience on the course. This performance gave them a chance to apply their skills with the opportunity to contribute to a large-scale show.

Antonia has been studying Production Arts at GYA King’s Cross for three years: “This is my third year, and it has been very fun to learn about what goes on backstage at a production, like sound lighting, stage management, set design, even some directing which has been very fun.”

Lux is in their first year on the course, but has already developed lots of new skills: “it’s been really cool to get to explore loads of skills I’ve never gotten to do before, and you see a lot more professional areas than you would in other places where you can get experience. There’s a lot to learn!”

For Antonia, the showcase is a great opportunity for everyone in the GYA King’s Cross community to collaborate. “Today there’s going to be a showcase for everyone at GYA King’s Cross, so the Music students, the Drama students and the Production Arts students. Everyone is coming together for the end-of-year showcase, and the theme is ‘NOTHING IN THE WORLD BUT YOUTH!’, so we’re trying to explore what it means to be a young person today.”

Throughout the term the Production Arts students attended workshops in the Production Arts department at Guildhall school, designing and creating graffiti murals that were used in the show. Lux explained some of the skills used to create these: “We were learning the basics on making sets look 3D. As you can see, we worked on the highlights and shadows on this to make it look like a real brick wall, layering colours to make it look like it’s a certain texture, adding the graffiti and the stencilling.”

“Everyone in the class teamed up and made these murals,” says Antonia, “they explore some of the themes of the showcase, like money, rebellion, the environment and our future.”

On the day of the performance, the students also worked with industry professionals using the world-class facilities at Milton Court to contribute to the smooth running of the show. Antonia was on stage management. “I’ve been helping out backstage, helping coordinate the scene transitions, shadowing the Stage Manager and I’ll be doing that during the concert.”

Lux was on lighting. “I’m working at the back on the lighting desk shadowing the person whose working on lights. I’m helping organise what happens when, and the orientation of the students on stage, and generally suggesting ideas of what might look nice.”

Our Production Arts students at GYA have this exceptional opportunity to learn backstage skills and put them into practice in a real-world setting. If you're interested in the design and production side of theatre, film and TV or live events, why not check out what’s on offer at Guildhall School.

Thanks to Lux and Antonia for taking the time to speak with us.