New Century: A History
New Century (formerly New Century Hall) has existed since the 1960s, hosting legendary acts such as The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and 808 State in the 800 capacity Grade II listed venue, a short walk from Manchester Victoria. New Century, a building that has been a key part of the Manchester creative scene, is the perfect place to guide the next generation of creatives. We’ve been working hard with project management team Venture Projects to ensure that justice is done to this incredible space.
On the top floor, the aforementioned venue has been fully modernised and refreshed, whilst keeping the original 1960s sprung dance floor, wood cladded walls and unique lighting that have wowed audiences for decades. The space has to be seen to be believed, and you can do just that as we bring well-known acts back to the stage, starting with John Cooper Clarke on 20th September.
Moving down to the ground floor, a brand-new addition to the building comes in the form of New Century Kitchen, an airy and relaxed food hall with six food vendors on site ready to tantalise your tastebuds, and maybe introduce you to cuisine you haven’t tried before. The space is super social and opens up onto Sadler’s Yard, perfect for eating outside in the summer sun.
Last but definitely not least, we’ve built a brand-new, bespoke centre shared by ACC and dBs in the basement. Don’t let that word fool you. The space is bright, airy and social with space throughout to catch up with your mates between lessons, practice together and collaborate.
Our Equipment
We’ve kitted out the centre with the latest and greatest professional-grade equipment for music and games learners, including Dolby Atmos studios, recording and rehearsal studios, top of the range Mac suites and much, much more. In short, everything you could need while studying with us to hone your newly learned skills.
The venue upstairs benefits from full connectivity with the centre downstairs, allowing you the unique opportunity to practice your craft in a real-world scenario as acts perform on the historic stage two floors above.
Our Software
For our games students, we’ve partnered with Overclockers to build a fully equipped games development studio with access to the most important game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity, high-performance PCs with top-end graphics cards and RGB keyboards and mice to work on.
Our dBs games labs and showcase classrooms are crafted by our partners, ASUS and AMD and include top of the range gaming PCs with RGB towers/ keyboards/ mice and high-end ROG STRIX 165hz/ 1440p gaming monitors. Our desktops are also equipped with state-of-the-art 3060 and 3070 RTX graphics cards, blisteringly fast SSDs and 32 GB of RAM. With access to 3D Studio Max, Maya, ZBrush, Unreal, Unity and the full Adobe Suite, learners will also be able to work with state-of-the-art and industry-level AR/VR motion capture technology and software from Noitom and bring ideas and concepts to life.
We’re so excited to open our doors and share this space with the next generation of creative and digital talent in Manchester. We welcome our first cohort of learners to the centre in early September, and we’ll be sharing even more from this amazing space over the coming months.
If you want to see it for yourself, keep an eye on our website for upcoming open events coming soon.