Art Directors Guild Pauses Training Program Amid Industry Challenges

Katie Kilkenny
·3-min read

The Art Directors Guild has paused a training program intended to hone the next generation of production designers and art directors amid industry turbulence in 2024, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The program, called the Production Design Initiative, is set to return in 2025. “This temporary pause in our PDI program during a year of contract negotiation gives our staff and membership the ability to focus on our movement of ‘Many Crafts, One Fight’,” said ADG leadership in a statement to THR on Thursday. (“Many Crafts, One Fight” is a solidarity campaign that IATSE Locals are participating in amid their 2024 negotiations cycle with top Hollywood studios and streamers.) “This labor movement alongside our peers and colleagues only strengthens our excitement for the future of the industry.”

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The statement and confirmation arrived after Indiewire reported on Wednesday that the union — which represents its namesake craftspeople as well as illustrators, graphic artists, matte artists, model makers, production designers, scenic artists, title artists and set designers — told potential applicants that ongoing unemployment in the field had contributed to the decision to suspend the program. The union “cannot in good conscience encourage you to pursue our profession while so many of our members remain unemployed,” the email to potential applicants, sent from the leadership team responsible for the PDI program, stated.

The email added, “The reason for our decision to suspend the 2024 PD Initiative is due to the serious downturn in current employment opportunities for our membership, both in North America and globally. Currently more than 75% of our members are unemployed and many have not been working for 18 months or more.”

In their statement to THR about the pause on the program on Thursday, ADG leaders did not deny that this email had been sent but did say that the data cited had not been fact-checked and “may be inaccurate.” The email was sent as a result of an “internal technical error” and was an early draft, the statement added.

“Additionally, our overall message to membership was not accurately captured throughout the email,” the statement continued. “Our guild, alongside the entire motion picture/entertainment industry, has felt the effects of a global pandemic, an industry-wide strike and shift in the business models that underpin our industry. However, none of this dampens our optimism about the future of our industry and the future of production design as a profession.”

The PDI program allows participants to be placed on film, television, commercial, live event and/or theme park work alongside ADG production designers and art directors who serve as their mentors. Participants are paid and insured like production assistants on these projects, and must work 260 days (consecutive or non-consecutive) to complete the program. Twenty-six people participated in 2023, while 24 participated in 2022, according to the union’s website.

Industry crew members continue to face a difficult job market in the wake of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, which had already forced many to dig into their savings as major productions shut down. The latest FilmLA report, which tracked production in the Los Angeles area during the first quarter of 2024, found shoot days down 9 percent compared with the same period in 2023 and 20 percent down compared to a five-year average of the same period.

Meanwhile, West Coast Locals of crew union IATSE — including the ADG — are currently locked in negotiations with studios and streamers over a new three-year labor contract. Among the top priorities this time around? Raising minimum wage rates, replenishing funds in the union’s health and pension plans after the work stoppages of 2023, and, per a late April update from IATSE, improving “job security.”

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