For 28-year-old Bangor-born Hope Street actor, Finnian Garbutt, the absence of adequate full-time training for young actors in Northern Ireland is “hard to comprehend”.<\/p>\n
Having attended drama school in England, the actor describes the experience as “a completely different beast” to the options available in Northern Ireland, which demands 40 hours minimum a week of intense training. <\/p>\n
But he said it was financially “unsustainable for a lot of people” as it can cost up to \u00a313,000 for course fees in England.<\/p>\n
Garbutt is vocal about the need for more support closer to home. <\/p>\n
“I’ve worked with so many people from here who are so talented,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Funding the arts is essentially what needs to happen here.”<\/p>\n
Remaining hopeful about the future for the arts in Northern Ireland, Garbutt said: “I’ve been able to make a career here, so I definitely think there are opportunities, just not enough.” <\/p>\n
In a statement, the Education Authority told BBC News NI: “The policies which are implemented by Student Finance NI, in relation to eligibility of courses for which students may be awarded financial support, are determined by the Department for the Economy”.<\/p>\n
BBC News NI has contacted the Department for the Economy for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 28-year-old Bangor-born Hope Street actor, Finnian Garbutt, the absence of adequate full-time training for young actors in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-327449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114992291753806803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}