Memorandum submitted by Conservatoires
UK
1. PURPOSE
To highlight the work of the UK's conservatoires
and place them as key players in building the future of higher
education in the 21st century.
2. BACKGROUND:
THE UK CONSERVATOIRES
The nine UK conservatoires are a major element
in performing arts at higher education level. Based in the six
cities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, London, Glasgow and Manchester,
they train some 5,000 musicians at undergraduate, postgraduate
and research levels. This compares with a total population of
students on all HE music courses in the UK of 23,000 (figures
from the conservatoires and the Higher Education Statistics Agency
HESA). The conservatoires therefore train almost one in four (22%)
of all the UK's HE music students.
In addition, five of the nine conservatoires
train over 900 drama or dance students. This means that the proportion
of all performing arts HE students at conservatoires is around
one in seven (14%).
The global nature of conservatoires is reflected
in the fact that, overall, a third of students come from countries
other than the UK. The proportion attending each conservatoire
ranges from 12% to 44%. Several conservatoires cater for students
from some 50 countries; overall, over 75 countries are represented
in the conservatoires. Graduates of UK conservatoires perform
worldwide and work in the global music industries.
THE NINE
UK CONSERVATOIRES
Guildhall School of Music & Drama (GSMD)
Leeds College of Music (LCM)
Royal Academy of Music (RAM)
Royal College of Music (RCM)
Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM)
Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama (RSAMD)
Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD)
Trinity College of Music (TCM)/Laban Centre (Trinity
Laban)
UCE Birmingham Conservatoire (with Birmingham
School of Acting)
Between them, the conservatoires offer around
100 music courses embracing over 70 different types of instrument
and ten types of voice across a range of traditional and contemporary
genres from different cultures; as well as composition, conducting
and opera repetiteur; plus courses in other areas of study covering
music technology and production; artistic, cultural or creative
leadership, music therapy and community music, musicology and
music recording.
The drama and dance departments and schools
within, or in partnership with, the nine conservatoires offer
courses that include acting and voice, dance and choreography,
dance science, movement and production, stage management and technical
theatre, arts management, theatre design, and digital film and
television.
Conservatoires also provide a range of other
courses, often in partnership with other institutions, such as
the RNCM PGCE course with Specialist Strings, Wind and Percussion
Teaching in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University,
and a forthcoming QTS undergraduate course also with MMU. Trinity
has links with the Bhavan Institute to offer a BMus (Hons) in
Indian Classical Music.
They all have junior departments for young musicians
aged between three and 18, which form part of the DfES Music &
Dance Scheme's programme of Centres for Advanced Training (CATs)
at the pre-18 stage of learning. Several thousand children and
young people—and a growing number of adults—are embraced
by the work of the junior departments, by the conservatoires'
education, outreach and community programmes, and by partnerships
with other agencies working with young musicians. Through such
work, the conservatoires open themselves up to a much broader
range of young people, providing them with music-making and learning
opportunities, developing their musical potential at an earlier
age, and making resources and expertise more available to them.
3. BACKGROUND:
THE WORK
OF CONSERVATOIRES
UK
Conservatoires UK is an umbrella organisation,
comprising the nine conservatoires, set up in 2005 to "further
the advancement of higher and further education in the UK in the
fields of music and the performing arts". As a key part of
this, it has established and maintains the CUKAS admissions process
to facilitate applications to such HE establishments and assist
applicants gain access to them.
Conservatoires UK is in the process of establishing
itself as a more effective professional organisation that initially
can "speak with a clear and authoritative voice for the business
of advanced professional music training; reposition the conservatoire
sector to reflect changing needs and employment patterns in the
music profession; and achieve greater visibility through the provision
of leadership and a more influential voice".
This process has led Conservatoires UK to adopt
a wider mission, which is to "promote and support the highest
quality advanced professional training in music and the performing
arts in the UK; promote access to excellence in music and the
performing arts for all; and advocate and lobby with a powerful
single voice on behalf of the needs and aspirations of conservatoires
and those who learn, teach and research in them".
Since 2005, Conservatoires UK has therefore
been developing its role, on behalf of the conservatoires, to
embrace a set of aims and activities more appropriate to the dynamic
and global nature of higher education and of the creative industries
and economies to which its graduates will contribute. These aims
and activities include:
— Repositioning the conservatoire sector
to meet the changing needs and employment patterns of the music
and performing arts professions, the wider creative industries
and cultural economy, and of those who work in them.
— Leading debate and promoting policy
on music education and training at pre- and post-18 levels, on
developing training for music teaching, on future funding for
conservatoires, and on future options for the conservatoire sector.
— Promoting the activities, and the
cultural and economic value, of conservatoires throughout the
education and training sectors, government and the wider political
spectrum, the music and creative industries, and to the wider
public.
— Working with government departments
and agencies responsible for funding, training and skills, curriculum
and qualifications to ensure the aims and needs of the sector
are met in these areas.
— Working with the music and creative
industries to ensure the aspirations and needs of graduates and
of these industries are best served, and to enhance students'
employability.
Conservatoires UK is providing more information
about the conservatoire sector, which includes:
— Establishing an evidence base for
conservatoires by researching, explaining and disseminating information
and statistics on their profile, constituency and resources; as
well as building on the statistical information collected through
the CUKAS admissions process.
— Providing informed policy analysis
on the future of conservatoires, and of training in music and
the performing arts, in the higher education sector.
It also sees a greater collaborative role for
the performing arts institutions within the higher education sector.
Conservatoires UK is therefore working to:
— Encourage, develop and facilitate
widespread collaborations within and between member institutions—and
with others offering advanced professional training in the performing
arts—at all levels and across different activities, including
research, teaching and learning, management, and back-up services.
— Support and help to shape music education
at pre-tertiary level by establishing partnerships and projects,
and by increasing participation.
— Promote the conservatoires' role
as trainers of music teachers up to QTS through initial training
and professional development.
— Promote wider participation in conservatoire
activities and greater access to and sharing of their resources.
4. CONSERVATOIRES
WITHIN A
FUTURE HIGHER
EDUCATION SECTOR:
Some key issues
The nine UK conservatoires are at the heart
of education, training and creativity in the performing arts—primarily
music, but for drama and dance as well. They play a crucial role
in the higher education sector, and increasingly across the whole
of education, formal and non-formal. They are international centres
of excellence for the performing arts. Each has its own distinctive
dual approach of providing the highest quality advanced professional
training to their students, and of developing access to excellence
in the performing arts for all.
Over the last ten years, the conservatoires
have changed dramatically in terms of what they offer and how
they, and their students and graduates, are helping to transform
the cultural and creative landscape. They are offering a broader
and more dynamic curriculum geared to the needs of their students
and of the creative industries in which most will work; and have
a more explicit commitment to widening access to training—for
example, through the new admissions process CUKAS.
This process of change is accelerating as conservatoires
continue to adapt and innovate to meet the challenges, and take
up the opportunities, presented by the burgeoning creative industries
and cultural economy of the UK in the 21st century. With many
of their graduates also working internationally, the conservatoires
reflect the increasingly global nature of the higher education
sector in terms of creativity and business activity—perhaps
more than any other part of that sector.
All these changes are opening up opportunities
for the conservatoires, along with other partners, to play a wider,
more innovative and more influential role not just within higher
education, but across the education sector as a whole and within
their local and regional communities.
In this introductory paper, we highlight four
of the key issues that we consider crucial to the conservatoires'
role within the future sustainability of the higher education
sector:
1. Guaranteeing high-quality professional
training and maximising employability to match student aspirations
and industry needs within the cultural and creative economy.
2. Sustaining diversity of mission and of
institutional structures across the conservatoire sector.
3. Fulfilling the promise of wider participation
in terms of the young people who enter conservatoires as students
and of those who engage with the conservatoires through their
involvement with schools and communities.
4. Underpinning conservatoires' role as significant
contributors to cultural life regionally, nationally and internationally.
Employability
Conservatoire students say they want an experience
that provides them with the multiple skills to fit them for the
challenges of making a living both through performance of the
highest quality, and within education and the creative and cultural
industries of the global economy. That is what the conservatoires
aim to give them. For they do not just train their students for
the classical music world of employment, but also provide them
with the wide range of skills, experience and understanding that
they need in the multi-task and multi-genre creative and cultural
economy. Conservatoire graduates have already taken a leading
role in the development of a worldwide market for European music.
The ability of the conservatoires to continue to adapt and innovate
their employability offer requires close and effective partnerships
with the creative and cultural industries and with government
agencies, linked to a mutual understanding and empathy with what
each—conservatoire, industry and government—actually
does and can achieve together.
Sustaining diversity
A key factor in ensuring the conservatoire sector
can meet the challenge of graduate employability is the diverse
nature of each institution's offer and character combined with
a growing collaboration within, and increasingly beyond, the sector
itself. This can only be sustained and enhanced through a greater
flexibility in the funding and organisational structure of higher
education, and a wider understanding of the breadth and complexity
of today's conservatoire sector.
Widening participation
As the role, nature and content of conservatoires
continue to develop and change, they will more readily be able
to attract and cater for young people from the spread of ethnic
and socio-economic groups. While this process is already underway,
the issue of widening participation remains a challenge for the
conservatoires to differing degrees—as it does for the higher
education sector as a whole.
The nature of developing interest, talent and
creativity in music means that the issue of widening participation
at further and higher education needs to be addressed at the primary—and
even pre-school—stage of children's education and experience,
and through ensuring an equality in opportunity and a continuity
of provision. This is recognised in the aims and agenda of the
Music Manifesto, set out in its report Making Every Child's
Music Matter (October 2006), and in the Roberts report on
Nurturing Creativity in Young People (DCMS, July 2006),
both of which the conservatoires individually and collectively
support.
One challenge for the conservatoire sector is
the lack of detailed and long-term statistical evidence on its
applicants, students and graduates. This is currently being addressed
through the CUKAS admissions process and through a more determined
collective approach by Conservatoires UK to establish an evidence
base for the conservatoire sector.
Contributing to cultural and civic life
At the same time, the conservatoires are engaged
in widening their reach through the work they do with other music
agencies, particularly at pre-18 level and within their local
and regional schools and communities. They also act in a civic
role as regional arts centres, interacting with city- and regionally-based
music industries and other arts venues, companies and organisations.
This is all a growing part of the conservatoires' self-appointed
remit. They see it to be inextricable with the purpose of providing
a high-quality advanced professional music training. Such work
is a two-way process as students link together with schools and
communities, industries and venues in a benign circle of mutual
benefit.
These collaborations both strengthen the higher
education sector and open up its expertise, resources and creativity
to many more people. Expanding this vital area of work, particularly
in the conservatoire sector, requires a greater level of awareness
and support from government and its cultural agencies about the
potential of conservatoires to provide these opportunities.
5. MOVING FORWARD
The conservatoires are working to fulfil the
aspirations of maintaining the highest quality of learning and
performance, ensuring greater access to excellence, nurturing
creativity, and providing a learning experience that fits their
students for the global cultural and creative economy.
They want a higher education funding and organisational
structure that enables them to teach and do research to the highest
standards; to work with a wider range of talented young musicians
from across the genres; to reach out to local and regional communities;
and to develop their specific, innovative approaches to supporting
those young people who will become the creative leaders within
the global economy of the 21st century.
Therefore, they look to government to devise
and encourage a higher education structure and funding process
that provide the appropriate level and type of resources; support
innovative approaches to teaching, learning and research; and
offer the flexibility to sustain, develop and expand the diverse
nature of the UK's conservatoires.
April 2007
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