Encouraging audtions on NSCD’s CAT
Northern School for Contemporary Dance’s Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) trains young dancers to explore the world of movement. Explaining that on a webpage is one thing, but getting a nervous teenager to turn up and audition is a whole other bag.
A leading centre for pre-vocational training
We interviewed current CAT students about their own experiences, using their answers to address the worries that stop someone from auditioning in the first place. We then filmed that year’s Easter Intensive and cut it into a trailer promoting the following year’s programme. Together, the two pieces formed a mini-campaign encouraging auditions from young people, particularly those from underrepresented groups.
Breaking down the barriers to audition
A member of staff can explain what CAT offers – and very well, mind! But hearing it from someone your own age, nerves and all, is what actually makes it feel possible to a young person, that’s a different kind of persuasion. Plus, video acts as another touchpoint in a wider marketing strategy.
The case studies alone have had over 25,000 views online, and because the content doesn’t date, it gets reused for every new cohort rather than reshot from scratch. Beyond recruitment, the same videos have also been useful for training and for learning and engagement work with NSCD’s partners.
Recruiting for a course, programme or scheme?
At Circle Take Films, we build campaigns around the people who’ve lived it; structured to work as more than a one-off push, marketing first, then training and partner use later, and then something you keep using year after year.
The video is really strong. You get a great range of people talking about the intensive from all different backgrounds and experience, which is fab.
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