A Dubbo-born theatre professional is helping to bridge a growing skills gap in Australia’s live performance industry with an innovative program designed to prepare young crew for life on the road.

Cally Bartley, an independent Production and Stage Manager with extensive touring experience, identified a lack of opportunities for young people wanting to build their skills in touring productions.

Her response was to design a new training and mentoring initiative, “Tour Ready, Tour Fit”, aiming to give emerging stage and production managers and technicians practical, hands-on experience before and during their first tours.

The program is being piloted this year through a partnership between Arts on Tour, the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), and Performing Arts Connections Australia (PAC Australia).

Cally recently presented the initiative at the Performing Arts Connections Australia Conference in Brisbane, where she shared the program’s approach to supporting the next generation of touring crew.

The pilot is currently underway with ATYP’s tour of Saplings, with Cally working with the two new-to-touring crew. She also mentored the young touring Production Manager for Dance Makers Collective’s “All In”, which was presented in Dubbo last month.

With over a decade of touring to venues across Australia, Cally has worked with Monkey Baa Theatre Company, CDP Theatre Producers, Bell Shakespeare, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Cally has toured to the DRTCC several times with Monkey Baa productions such as “Possum Magic” and “Josephine Wants to Dance”.

When she is not touring, Cally is based on Gadigal land, working across major events and festivals including the Sydney Festival, Sydney New Year’s Eve, and the Sydney Lunar Festival for the City of Sydney.

Tour Ready Tour Fit has two key components. Tour Ready is an intensive one-day session covering the touring process, from planning documents and preparing a production to loading trucks and managing bump-ins and bump-outs. Tour Fit provides hands-on mentoring, pairing an experienced industry professional with an emerging crew member for the pre-tour period and first few venues, followed by ongoing check-ins throughout the tour.

Cally said the program was created to address a gap in the industry, where small touring crews can leave young production staff with limited opportunities to learn from experienced professionals.

“My mentorship program was designed to fill this gap – with an experienced professional providing advice and training to the next generation of production staff,” she said.

The program comes as the live performance industry continues to experience skills shortages, and producers struggling to find experienced production crew with touring experience. By combining practical training with mentoring, Tour Ready Tour Fit aims to build confidence, knowledge and skills – helping young professionals become better prepared for the realities of taking a show on the road.

“As a country girl at heart, I want to ensure that there is a production workforce who are keen to take a touring job so that shows continues to tour to regional centres, just like Dubbo, all across Australia,” Cally concluded.