Building the Future of Volunteer AV Training Together

The Association of Worship & Venue Technicians (AWVT) was founded with a simple goal: to equip volunteer AV technicians with the skills, confidence, and recognition they deserve. Across churches, schools, and community venues, volunteers form the backbone of technical teams — yet structured training has always been hard to find.

In 2025, we are not launching a formal training programme. Instead, we are inviting collaborators and partners to help us define the curriculum, shape delivery models, and create a sustainable framework for the future.

Our priorities over the coming year include:

Curriculum development – designing a structured pathway from beginner to advanced technician.
Collaboration with venues and churches – ensuring training reflects real-world needs.
Accessible learning – blending online resources with hands-on practice.
Volunteer support – building a community where technicians can share knowledge and encourage one another.

If you are an AV professional, trainer, church leader, or venue manager, we want to hear from you. Together, we can establish a clear, nationally recognised approach to training that empowers volunteers and strengthens local communities.

How to Get Involved:

📩 Contact us at info@awvt.org

🌐 Follow our updates here on the blog and at awvt.org.

An event like TCSMS makes the breadth of technical knowledge involved particularly visible.

A volunteer might begin simply wanting to help operate a sound desk on a Sunday morning. Before long, they can find themselves dealing with microphones, mixing, monitoring, signal paths, digital consoles, troubleshooting, hearing safety and increasingly networked and software-based systems.

For some volunteers that develops into considerable technical expertise. Others may only ever need a relatively small set of skills to perform a particular role confidently and safely.

That creates an important question for AWVT. How much does somebody need to know at the beginning, what should come next, and how can we recognise the skills they develop along the way?

We don’t think the answer is simply to take professional training and make a smaller version of it. Volunteer training has to reflect the environments people actually work in, the time they realistically have available to learn, and the responsibilities they’re actually being asked to undertake.

Tomorrow, the research begins

Tomorrow we will launch AWVT’s new research into volunteer audio skills.

We’re asking volunteer technicians themselves — alongside the people who lead, train and work with them — to help us understand what volunteers are actually being asked to do, what skills and knowledge they need, what training is already available, and where the gaps are.

This isn’t about starting with a qualification and then trying to persuade volunteers that they need it. We want to start at the other end: understand the real work volunteers are doing, the environments in which they’re doing it, and the support they need to develop.

The results will help inform the development of AWVT’s first audio standards and the progression pathway that sits behind them.

For today, we’re continuing the conversations here at TCSMS.

If you’re at the Summit, come over and find us — we’d genuinely like to hear about your experiences.

And if you’re involved with volunteer audio somewhere else, come back tomorrow when the questionnaire goes live.

This is your opportunity to help shape what comes next.

Attending the Church Sound & Media Summit 2025

Russ Taylor, AWVT's Director, will be attending the Church Sound & Media Summit 2025 on both 26 & 27 September 2025. If you are involved in church sound, media, or technical arts and would like to talk about: your training needs, your ability to contribute, or...

Calling Collaborators: Help Build the AWVT Training Curriculum

The Association of Worship & Venue Technicians (AWVT) is growing, and we’re inviting collaborators to help shape the next stage of our mission. Our goal is to design a clear, structured curriculum that equips volunteer AV technicians with the knowledge, skills, and...