Fill The Room
Free audio, video and lighting training. Sixty hours, four tiers, no tuition and nothing to buy — for anybody who wants to learn a trade that will employ them anywhere they choose to live.
“Doesn’t look that hard to me.”
An athlete at the Special Olympics South Carolina State Fall Games
Why this program exists
Five minutes later he was running the show.
At the Special Olympics South Carolina State Fall Games in Myrtle Beach, an athlete on the floor kept watching the tech table. Asked whether he wanted to help, he said it did not look that hard. He was brought up to the board, shown a few things, and within five minutes he was running the show while the engineer took a thirty-minute break.
That is the whole argument for this program. The barrier to this trade is not aptitude. It is that nobody is ever handed the board.
What it costs
Nothing. Not tuition, not materials, not equipment.
Tuition
Free, permanently
There is no fee of any kind, and there is no paid tier. The program is funded by the Foundation so that cost is never the reason somebody does not learn this.
Equipment
You do not need to own any
37 of the 51 lessons in the audio tier need nothing but paper or a browser. There is a practice desk that behaves like a real one and runs on a phone.
Class size
Six at a time
Small enough that everybody gets their hands on the equipment on the nights the room is available, which is the only way this is actually taught.
The curriculum
Four tiers. Eighteen modules. Sixty contact hours.
Audio comes first because audio is where the work starts and where the jobs are. The audio tier — Front of House — is written out module by module and running now.
What you practise on
Four tools, and you need no equipment for any of them.
You cannot learn this trade by reading about it, and most people cannot get their hands on a console until somebody trusts them with one. These exist so the first time you touch a real desk is not the first time you have done it. They run in a browser, they work on a phone, and they are free like everything else here.
Start here
The stage plot
Lay the room out before you get there. Drag the band and the gear where they actually stand, turn a wedge to face a player, and send the picture ahead. It is the first thing a working engineer produces for a show. Open the stage plot →
Then mix it
The practice desk
A real mixing console in the browser, running real multitrack audio — gain, EQ, monitors, pan and faders that actually change what you hear. It builds its channels from your stage plot, so you are mixing your own band. Analog and digital, side by side. Open the desk →
Put it in a room
The virtual room
Place the gear, run the cable, and find out whether it works before a band is standing there. Plug a speaker lead into a microphone input and the room tells you exactly what you just did. Open the room →
Check yourself
The lab and the placement test
Short drills against each module, and a placement test that tells you where to start rather than assuming you are at zero. The lab → Placement test →
How to join
Three steps, and the first one is on your phone.
- Fill in the enrollment form. It is a web page, not a document — it works on a phone, it saves as you type, and you can stop halfway and come back.
- Take the placement test. Twenty-four multiple-choice questions, about ten minutes. There is no pass mark and nobody is turned away for any answer — it only decides where you start.
- Start at module one. Everybody does, including people who already run sound. You take the same test again at the end, and the difference between the two is the point of it.
Where this leads
A trade that will employ you anywhere you want to live.
Live audio, video and lighting work exists in every town with a church, a school, a theatre or a bar. It does not require a degree, it is not offshoreable, and the people who can do it reliably are chronically short. The program ends with a real show in a real room, because that is the thing an employer actually asks about.