Radium Workshops FAQ

There are a few reasons why we decided to offer some knowledge and experience sharing externally on a more structured basis than in the past. Initially, we started exploring the idea in response to demand. We constantly receive phone and email requests from creatives requesting to spend time in our studio learning from us, and we’re often invited to give guest lectures at Universities, Colleges, and Professional Media Events. In the past we limited our involvement with these, choosing to keep our focus squarely on our own team’s creative development and our professional work. However, after a great deal of internal discussion and exploration of the idea, including having run several trial short courses, we saw a clear case for expanding this aspect of what we do, and offering some Professional Development Workshops on a formal basis for these reasons:

• It’s inspiring and really healthy for our team’s development to share their knowledge and connect with new creatives. As sound and music creatives ourselves, we spend a lot of days in dark studios wrestling with complex creative briefs, deep in the edit. We found in the initial trials we ran that taking some time out from what we usually do to think about, talk about, and share our knowledge, and engage with other creatives, gave us all a fresh perspective, deepened, defined and refined our thoughts about what we do every day, and it really extra-energized the whole studio.
• Training freelancers. When we occasionally work with new freelancers we often find we need to spend time showing them how to connect with our team and with the project seamlessly before they’re able to make a valuable contribution to what we’re doing. Our Sonic Motion workshop in particular addresses this, and is applicable industry wide.
• Preservation and development of the Art and Craft of Practical Sound. In the digital age, audio sample packs are everywhere and often used for cost effectiveness and convenience. They have their place, and if well produced they’re great, in the right context. However, each instance of recording and processing in a production chain inevitably degrades sound quality and impact of storytelling, and for that reason we believe it’s incredibly important to preserve the art and craft of originating sound from scratch, whilst evolving it to fuse with the digital environment we all work in today. This ethos has always threaded throughout all Radium’s work, and we hope to share this with like-minded creatives, so they can themselves also carry it forward into the future.
• May help our future recruitment for the team. We’ve always advertised any full time positions we’re looking to fill, and we spend a great deal of time reviewing job applications and listening through demos. Whilst we must make it clear that there is absolutely no connection between taking one of our short courses and gaining a position on our inhouse team, logically it does make sense that occasionally we may meet future team members initially through these short courses.

First, let’s talk about what we don’t do. We’re not looking to compete with existing formal education for the creative sector. We’re not delivering courses in how to use Logic, Protools, Cubase, or any other DAW, that is really well catered for elsewhere. We’re not delivering indepth courses in the theory or history of sound and music, there are other excellent formal education options available for this. You won’t be spending your time with us writing essays, and we won’t be teaching you how to promote yourself on social media, again, there are plenty of other great options out there, delivered both in person and online, which will coach you in those skills.

What we do bring to the table is a fast, useful, practical professional development option which delivers tangible knowledge, upskilling and tools to you straight away. Our short courses are practical and hands-on, niche, and designed, in the short time you’re with us, to give you very specific experience and tools to help you take a definite step forward in your creative and career development.

• Perhaps you’ve just completed a course of study in sound/music, you’re about to start working with your first clients, and you’d like a proven roadmap for starting as a comparative beginner to navigate that professional environment both creatively and commercially.
• If you’re in beginning stages of your career and already working with clients but would like to get some professional input, mentoring, and/or some additional showreel material for what you’re doing, our short courses will be really helpful at this stage of your development.
• Maybe you’re thinking about seriously pursuing a career in sound and music but haven’t decided yet. Our short courses, delivered in a working studio with a current professionally successful team, will give you some excellent insight into what it’s really like to work in our industry, and in most cases, a taster of real project flow and deadline pressure, so you can make an informed decision about your future career in audio.
• Perhaps you’re heading to University, want to study media production, dabbled already in sound and music, but not completely sure if that’s where you should specialise? Our short courses can give you a flavour of the creative audio industry, to help you decide if that’s the right educational path to pursue formally.
• Perhaps there’s a very niche sonic creative area or skillset you’d like to explore in a collaborative, working studio environment.

Check each individual course for the specific outcomes we’re delivering. You’ll find them listed HERE

Most of our groups will have a maximum of 4 people per course. Some groups may potentially have 6 people, depending on the content. No more than that. Check each individual course for the detail. We want to make sure everyone has plenty of space to be heard and explore their potential during their time with us, and that our capacity to give individual attention isn’t stretched too tight. So we’re strictly limiting the number of seats per course.

Because there are significant costs we incur in offering them. Running the courses involves our team taking time out from commercial production; setting up and running a dedicated learning space inside our studio; creating course content, materials and assets; administrative costs in handling enquiries; and building and running the bookings website. So we’ve set short course charges to make a contribution to offsetting that investment from our side. Because we’re a VAT registered business, we must also add VAT on top of our course charges.

Not necessarily, it’ s totally fine with us if you’re self taught, so long as you’re able to keep up with the rest of the group. Refer to each individual course for information about prior skill/experience we recommend you bring. We have a section all about our definitions of prerequisite skill levels for our courses here. If you’re still unsure, you can get in touch with us on workshops@radium-audio.com and we’ll help you figure it out. Please use subject line format “[Your Name]-[Your Contact Number]-Unsure Required Skill Level”.

We have been verified by The UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) and our UKPRN is 10081194. To be clear, providing educational services is not our core business. We are a multi-awarded successful sound and music team, working every day on projects in feature film trailer, broadcast, advertising, gaming, and interactive. That said, we’ve decided to offer some professional development opportunities sharing some of the training and development we have done with our own team. Our short courses are highly niche, hands on, practical, and steeped in the experience and knowledge we’ve accumulated in our own path to success, and continue to build upon every day so we stay current and relevant in the rapidly changing creative and entertainment sectors.

If english is your first language, you’ll be fine. If english is your second language, we strongly recommend that you have intermediate to advanced level ability to get the best from the course. Each course group will discuss complex intangible and subjective concepts, emotions and ideas as part of exploring creative briefing and communication, so you’ll need to be able to follow along and join in with that conversation to get the full benefit from your time with us.

Check out our available courses here. Select the course which interests you, double check carefully the “required skill level” requirements before you book, then submit your contact details and pay by credit card to request to reserve your place. You will receive immediate payment confirmation. A follow up email within 24 hours will confirm your booking, and provide any further information needed.

Unfortunately no, we’re not able to hold places manually. You will need to book online to reserve your place on any given date offered.

Right now we’re only accepting online short course bookings from the UK, EU, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia. For everyone in other locations, we apologise that we haven’t been able to make online bookings available for you just yet. Rapidly changing local laws globally regarding collection of sales tax for distance selling and digital sales have prompted us to take a cautious approach to this. We expect to add more booking locations steadily. If you’re trying to book from a location our website doesn’t serve yet, email us on workshops@radium-audio.com and we may be able to help with your booking individually. If we find we have really strong demand from a location we’re not serving just yet, we’ll prioritise getting it up online.

If all our places on a given short course are taken, email us with a specific booking request giving the following information:

• Subject line format “[Your Name]-[Your Contact Number]-Waitlist Booking Request”.
• Course
• Any dates/days you are DEFINITELY NOT available to attend, and any particularly convenient times that you would prefer to attend.

In the first instance we will waitlist you in case of any cancelled places, and offer you first option to book these before making them public.

Alternatively, if we have enough requests for a given course and all the existing dates for it are sold out, depending on our own schedule we may possibly put on an extra date and let you know before publicly advertising, so you can book it if it works for you.

Each person may only book a single place at a time on any given course. If you are a company looking to arrange a group booking, email us on workshops@radium-audio.com with the following information and we’ll work with you to organise it.

• Subject line format “[Your Name]-[Your Contact Number]-Group Booking Request”.
• Company Name
• Course
• Preferred Date options
• Anything specific you’d like to tell us about your group, and what you’d like to achieve for them.
• Preferred group size

The first time you book and pay with us, you will need to process the normal VAT inclusive transaction and pay the full VAT inclusive amount.
After you have made this first transaction, email us on workshops@radium-audio.com including the following information:

• Subject line format “[Your Name]-[Your Contact Number]-EU VAT Reverse Charge Request”
• Your contact details
• Course and dates you booked
• Attach a clear and fully legible pdf copy of your VAT registration certificate.

We will check the registered number, name and address on the VAT certificate against your billing details in the Radium account which was set up for you, and cross check with the EU VAT authority database. If these certificate details are not legible or do not match exactly across the 3 checkpoints, then unfortunately we will not be able to assist with reverse charge VAT. However, if we are able to clearly see an exact match between the billing details, EU database details, and the registered VAT certificate details, we will refund your initial VAT payment, and amend your Radium account so that you are not charged the VAT portion for any future payments.