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Usher Introduces An Internship
Courtesy of Usher via Instagram
Usher has launched an internship program that will run alongside his upcoming R&B: Raymond and Brown tour with Chris Brown.
Why It Hits: The nuts and bolts of putting on a tour are becoming a lost art, and there’s essentially no pipeline training the next generation to take over these highly technical jobs. At a time when the job market for young people is so depressed, creating pathways to cool jobs that AI can’t replace should be music to everyone’s ears.
Behind The Program: Usher’s nonprofit, Usher’s New Look (UNL), is collabing with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Detroit on “Entertainment Industry Club: Live Touring Edition.”
According to Complex, the program will recruit 10 interns from Detroit and Atlanta who are 18 or older.
Participants will receive real-world training across multiple aspects of touring, including production, operations, and wardrobe.
They’ll also undergo pre-tour training, so they’re not thrown into the deep end at their first show.
Through a separate initiative called “Spark Session: Making of the Tour,” the Boys & Girls Club will get exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the tour.
Encore: Usher hopes the program will give overlooked communities valuable access to touring jobs, effectively serving as an apprenticeship for work that people can’t simply find on LinkedIn. Interviews are already underway, with the internship set to hit the road from May 27 through August 10.
Next Tour: Given the skyrocketing popularity of live music and young people’s growing interest in blue-collar work, the touring industry may be poised for a recruitment renaissance.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.