Breakthrough Traineeship – Junior Producer, Southampton

Breakthrough is a 6‑month employability programme designed as a stepping stone to get you workplace experience and all-important employment skills. This short placement gives you insight into a future career in the Creative Industry, supporting your confidence and professionalism in the workplace, and helping you to break through into a career that matters to you!

This is an exciting opportunity for a creative individual to join our small and friendly team as Junior Producer – learning on the job the key foundational skills for running an arts organisation and producing high quality touring theatre. You will work across the organisation, providing administrative and practical production support to deliver our core programme, which includes:

• Commissioning new work.
• High quality productions in theatres, community settings and schools nationwide.
• Workshops with schools, writer collectives and experienced professionals.

Duties and responsibilities of the Junior Producer:

• Assisting with the OperaUpClose team to plan productions, workshops, events and other project activity.
• Liaising with venues, partners, creatives, cast and production team, ensuring clear communication and that all company members feel well supported.
• Supporting tour and event logistics including travel and accommodation booking, researching and booking rehearsal spaces, printing and posting scores, and creating company schedules.
• Developing a good understanding of organisational and production marketing requirements and supporting campaigns, taking an active role in creating social media posts and other digital content, updating OperaUpClose’s website, and collating weekly sales reports.
• Assisting administration including processing donations, collating and analysing evaluation data, and collating and reporting audience and participation data to Arts Council England and other funders.
• Attending workshops, events and other activities, welcoming and registering participants, supporting facilitators and other team members and contributing to post event evaluation.

This role will also allow you to shadow the OperaUpClose team, developing skills and confidence in other key aspects of producing including project budgeting; project scheduling; fundraising; deal negotiation; casting; marketing and brand awareness. The role will be based at offices at Mayflower Studios in Southampton, with the potential for some hybrid working.

Who we are: OperaUpClose is a chamber-scale opera company and arts charity with storytelling, innovation and partnership at its heart, rooted in the Solent region and touring across the UK. From our home at Mayflower Studios, Southampton, we are creating a legacy of excellence at chamber scale, commissioning and producing bold reinterpretations of known operas and stories that, alongside multidisciplinary, co‑created companion pieces, distil the essence of classics into new, contemporary works with their own artistic integrity and identity. Our work challenges perceptions of what opera is, who makes it, and who it’s for, diversifying the way audiences engage with the artform, broadening access across communities and generations, and making a vital contribution to the evolution and sustainability of the sector.