YORK, UK FILM / TALENT / FUTURE
The Viridian Academy
A training ground for the city,
built around real film production.
What the Academy Is
The Viridian Academy brings apprentices and postgraduate students together to learn by making an original feature-length production.
It combines two routes: the Level 4 VFX Apprenticeship and the Viridian Pathway, the University of York’s MA in Visual Effects work-placement route.
Four apprentices, on eighteen-month paid contracts at the living wage, work alongside the VFX MA’s Pathway students in a shared room provided by the University.
At the centre of their work sits a genuine, experimental feature production. The purpose is to develop judgement through the demands of making something real: weighing creative choices, solving unfamiliar problems and understanding how individual decisions shape the finished project.
It is the same wager Viridian’s founders made in 2012, when a group of postgraduates set out to make a film nobody thought could be made, and built a company out of what they learned by doing it.
Why It’s Different
Much regional screen-industry strategy follows the “media city” model: soundstages, scale and competition for production capacity. York’s strongest opportunity lies elsewhere.
As AI makes more routine execution cheaper, the Academy’s bet is that judgement becomes more valuable: knowing what is worth making, recognising what works and deciding how to get there. York can invest in that capacity now, using existing facilities and the expertise of a working company.
The apprenticeship also opens a route for people whose abilities may outstrip their formal qualifications: the self-taught coder, the games modder, the art-school leaver. Alongside the MA Pathway, it brings different kinds of talent into the same production environment.
These are people York should be able to develop and retain, with a credible route into an industry whose opportunities too often overlook them or pull them elsewhere.
The Academy gives practical expression to Viridian’s commitment to its people and its city. Training is part of the company’s purpose, with professional work providing the setting in which people develop.
Viridian’s own history gives that argument substance. The postgraduate experiment begun in 2012 grew into an independent VFX company making work for Universal, Warner Bros., HBO, Apple TV+, Netflix and Paramount. The Academy asks what would happen if York deliberately made that kind of beginning possible for more people.
Its Aspirations
The ten-year aspiration is a permanent institution, growing towards an annual apprenticeship intake of eight or more, with responsibility and opportunity shared across companies.
Participants should leave with experience of a completed production and a real credit, alongside the qualification attached to their route: the Level 4 apprenticeship or the University’s MA.
Some will join Viridian; some will start their own businesses; others will take their skills into the wider industry. Success means both stronger prospects for individuals and a deeper pool of talent for York’s creative businesses.
The ambition extends beyond local employment. Viridian’s production partnerships, including in India, offer a foundation for connecting work developed in York with international collaborators. Over time, the Academy should help the city originate productions as well as contribute to them.
The Academy offers York a practical way to turn its creative-industries ambitions into local capacity. It starts with people, an existing partnership and a production model already in operation.