Institutional Context
Summary
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is recognised internationally as one of the most forward-looking conservatoires. A World-leading Specialist Provider, it welcomes 900+ students from more than 60 countries every year, and it employs 153 FT and 348 PT staff; internationally recognised experts teach across the RNCM and the Junior RNCM. Annually, the RNCM engages with over 7,000 community and school participants through its ambitious and innovative Learning and Participation Programme. In 2021-22, 5,375 audience members attended the RNCM’s public lectures, 78,967 attended performance events and 13,444,690 accessed staff performances, TV appearances, and radio broadcasts across performance and research. Across its three pillars of teaching, research and concert activities, knowledge exchange is at the heart of all RNCM activities.
Institutional context
Home to over 900 students from more than 60 countries and employing professional staff across expertise in performance, composition, pedagogy, stage craft, young person’s engagement and other areas, the RNCM is dedicated to providing an outstanding education that propels students into careers as inspiring and versatile musicians, fully equipped for socially relevant futures both on and off stage. The RNCM is unique in combining internationally leading classical training and popular music training. Use of (digital) technology is research-led and embedded into all musical training as part of the education of socially engaged, forward-looking artists and teachers.
Knowledge exchange is at the heart of all activities: students performing in public concerts; serving local, national and international audiences; pre-tertiary school children participating in workshops or attending Junior RNCM, summer schools and short courses; staff sharing scholarship, performances, compositions with communities around the world.
Image 1. Rehearsal of RNCM Engage Young Brass.
The RNCM, recipient of World-specialist provider funding, has held Gold status in the Teaching Excellence Framework since 2017, and has received four Times Higher Education Awards and a Global Teaching Excellence Spotlight Award, testifying to the RNCM’s commitment (through its Strategic Plan 2020-2025) to equip every student to make a vital contribution to the cultural sector economy and to society.
Image 2. Tri-partite structure of RNCM Strategic Plan: Students-Music-Society
The RNCM’s Programmes are underpinned by knowledge exchange so as to equip students to become leaders in the music industry by educating critical awareness of the local and global impact of music across performance & production, teaching, and health & wellbeing.
Image 3. Graduate attributes (from RNCM Strategic Plan)
In 2019-22 this vision was borne out in three key projects:
Work across music, science and digital initiatives through Research England’s Expanding Excellence-funded work in PRiSM (Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music). These initiatives and activities further research in music and artificial intelligence, music and maths, music and wellbeing, and music and the environment, and engage practitioners and researchers within and beyond the institution in creative collaborative events, including the annual Future Music Festival.
The RNCM’s cutting-edge work in digital networking and dissemination in response to the Covid-19 pandemic (public, community building events such as an online concert series; masterclasses and informal concerts live-streamed across multiple social media platforms; and a series of eleven hour-long radio broadcasts) rewarded by a THE Award (2022).
The ‘StART Entrepreneurship project’ funded by the OfS and RE (£902,153) in recognition of the institution’s world-leading knowledge exchange activity which – in partnership with Royal Central School of Speech and Dram and University of the Arts London – explored the most effective ways to train creative industries students in entrepreneurial skills.
Image 4. StART Entrepreneurship Project headlines
RNCM activity is shared with external subscribers weekly via a ‘Resonate’ blog, a dedicated YouTube channel (including information for applicants and all stakeholders) and activity is shared via the @rncmlive Twitter feed (18.3k followers), Instagram account, and Facebook.
For further information, please send queries to research@rncm.ac.uk.
For further information, please send queries to Research@rncm.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
Aspect 1: Strategy
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is located one mile south of Manchester City Centre, on Oxford Road next to the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. Strategically vital to the RNCM are locally Manchester City and regionally the conurbation of Greater Manchester. Nationally the institution engages with and services the North of England stretching up to Cumbria, bringing expertise from cross-UK partnerships to the North. The RNCM is an active member (and long-term chair) of the national association CUK (Conservatoires UK). Since 2020, the RNCM’s Head of Enterprise has chaired the steering committee of the national subject association for Music in Higher Education (MusicHE). Finally, the institution leads the International Benchmarking Group established in 2010 and comprising ten Conservatoires across Europe, the US, Australia and East Asia.
Locally, the RNCM has strategically prioritised widening participation, achieved through targeted interventions with young and talented musicians designed to raise aspirations for pre-tertiary students (particularly primary). The RNCM has established both need and programme particulars by working directly with the local academy trust schools, grassroots music organisations, music hubs and local authority music services who form the institution’s key Knowledge Exchange participants.
Regionally, the RNCM has built strong partnerships with North West professional performing groups the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé, Manchester Camerata, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha, Opera North and Royal Northern Sinfonia. The RNCM works strategically with them to review access to music, music making and wider cultural education so as to create a joined-up programme of activities open to all across the North of England.
Nationally the RNCM is a member of Conservatoires UK, which represents the collective views of eleven UK conservatoires and which is chaired by the RNCM principal. Conservatoires UK is strongly committed to access and participation and to identifying and implementing targeted interventions to address the specific challenges in the performing arts. Conservatoires UK has been invited to contribute to Arts Council England’s planned work on Diversity and two CUK members, including the RNCM Principal (Chair of CUK), were invited to sit on the Department for Education’s Expert Steering Group, which is developing a model music curriculum for state primary schools. CUK has engaged with Ofsted to encourage the inclusion of performing arts in its new more holistic inspection regime, and with the Russell Group to raise the status of the performing arts at A-level as facilitating subjects for entry to the UK’s prestigious research-intensive universities.
The RNCM Principal, Deputy Principal, and senior RNCM staff consult continually on local and reginal need and actively steer responses to these needs through serving on the boards and committees of the Greater Manchester’s Cultural Steering Group, Manchester Engagement Network and the OfS National Collaborative Outreach Programme, and One Education (Music) and The Greater Manchester Music Education Hub,
The RNCM’s 2019-20 Access and Participation Plan laid out an ambitious programme that includes Knowledge Exchange in local and regional areas. Following the Access and Participation Impact Report 2019-20, the institution expanded on this in its five year Access and Participation Plan 2022-25.
RNCM Strategic Plan
The RNCM Strategic Plan demonstrates the institution’s aims to the following, all of which link directly to making a significant contribution to local growth and regeneration:
Commit to sharing our knowledge; developing an ambitious portfolio of targeted and impactful knowledge exchange and consultancy activities of relevance and benefit to those in our local community and to society as a whole.
Build on our collaboration with partners in Manchester and the City Region to extend the reach and scale of our impact; identifying opportunities to expand RNCM activities off-site and contributing to the growth of cultural activity and inward investment.
Place the climate and environmental impact at the heart of our decision-making; actively seeking ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprint through online working, adopt environmentally-friendly practices within our community and align with larger-scale interventions in Manchester and the City Region, using music as a catalyst to raise awareness.
Environmental responsibility: the RNCM’s Environmental Responsibility Statement acknowledges that the institution joins organisations in Greater Manchester and around the world in declaring a climate emergency. This announcement was made after the RNCM Board of Governors supported the institutional vision for a low carbon future. The RNCM have agreed to the following key steps:
Completely remove all investments in fossil fuels. Achieved 2022.
Full heat decarbonisation by 2038
Reduce carbon emissions by 13% annually to achieve Greater Manchester’s net zero carbon targets
Aspect 2: Activity
1. Commitment to sharing knowledge
The focus for the RNCM local growth and regeneration activity is centred on eliminating barriers towards accessing music and music education. The RNCM work here is based on UK-wide research: barriers to musical progression have been well-documented in several major reports on music education published over the last couple of years (reports from the Royal Philharmonic Society (Musical Routes, 2015), ABRSM (Making Music, 2014) and Dr Christina Scharff (Equality and Diversity in the Classical Music Profession, 2015) and Music Education: State of the Nation (ISM, January 2019), and Creating a More Inclusive Classical Music (2021). These reports conclude the following:
Children from lower socio-economic groups continue to be significantly disadvantaged compared with peers from more affluent backgrounds.
The cost of learning to play an instrument is a significant barrier to participation in music education and training.
Gender, ethnic and class backgrounds affect musicians’ ability to access the sector and succeed.
There has been a huge decline in uptake of Music at GCSE and A-level over the past 5-10 years.
Activity planning in turn is based on research by RNCM researchers such as the Director of Programme’s work on Music and Social Intervention (Henley, J., & Higgins, L. 2020) and work by the Head of Enterprise (Academic) on audience perception of different modes of engaging with concerts (Phillips, 2022).
To address key findings, the RNCM has continued to build projects targeted at breaking down barriers to musical enjoyment and education. This is mapped through the Strategic Plan (Box 1):
Knowledge sharing is implemented through targeted programmes that address the need for greater access to music education, and have a specific focus on primary age from low income and low participation neighbourhoods:
Children’s Opera Project: Each year the Learning and Participation staff bring local primary schools together with a composer and a team of RNCM students to stage a new musical production in the College’s Theatre
Image 2. RNCM Children’s Opera project involving 120 local school children, 30 student singers, and 60 RNCM student instrumentalists
Family Days: Family Days offer opportunities for people of all ages to participate in music-making activities and see current RNCM students in action.
Junior RNCM: Junior RNCM (JRNCM) offers a high-quality music education experience on Saturdays to pre-tertiary aged students. For the year 2021-22, there were 182 students attending JRNCM, and 88 (48%) students received one or more bursaries, and 35 students were from low-income areas (i.e., they fell into the IMD Quintiles 1 & 2).
RNCM Pathfinder: A collaborative scheme to enable talented young musicians aged 8 to 16 to overcome financial, social and cultural barriers to progress their musical talent. With support from regional Music Education Hubs and professional orchestral partners such as the BBC Philharmonic and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
RNCM Young Projects: These are a series of open access workshops for young people aged 5 to 18, learning some of the rarer instruments, such as bassoon and horn. The workshops are once or twice a term and are open to everyone free of charge.
Image 1. RNCM Young Brass rehearsal, part of RNCM Young Projects
Young Explorers Concerts: These are a series of concerts, three times a year, for families, designed as a first introduction to music and the RNCM.
Image 3. RNCM Young Harps rehearsal, part of RNCM Young Projects
The RNCM maintains an internal database for the monitoring of quantitative and qualitative feedback of all access and participation work. This provides a clear picture of trends in the areas in which we are working, assesses outcomes and overall impact of the work and enables reactive knowledge exchange at the local level. Beyond key investments as indicated above (bursaries at Junior and Senior study level; free events, etc.), the RNCM reviews allocated spend against each project to assess where budget is most usefully allocated, creating a working method responsive to ongoing data analysis. Evaluation of all widening participation projects is undertaken through questionnaires and through verbal and written feedback. As such, feedback on activities from any participant - young people, school staff and others – is analysed to see where the RNCM is successful in creating valuable experiences for people, and feeds directly back into the development of future projects while also shaping future policy.
2. Building on our collaborations with local and regional partners
The RNCM together with four universities based in Greater Manchester (GM) – Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Bolton, University of Manchester and University of Salford – collaborated with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) to develop a joint Civic Universities Agreement (CUA). This agreement – the biggest in the UK – sets out shared priorities and actions for how universities can support Greater Manchester to build back better following the pandemic and recognises that this increased our need to work together to address common regional challenges. The civic partnership’s sub-group ‘Creative Manchester’ regularly hosts events; the upcoming ‘CreaTech Showcase Event’, for instance will include cutting-edge RNCM-based research with local audiences on perception of live and livestreamed music. This type of work is underpinned by the Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy and significant institutional commitment to audience research and its dissemination.
The RNCM’s contribution towards local growth and regeneration has been recognised externally:
In 2020 the RNCM was awarded a grant of over £12,000 from The National Archives to establish a new network connecting three music archives in Greater Manchester. Part of The National Archives Collaborate and Innovate: Networks for Change initiative, the project brought together the archives of the RNCM, Hallé and Henry Watson Music Archive, to explore and share the histories of musicians who studied or performed in the region.
Image 4. RNCM archivist Heather Roberts shares artefacts from the archives with the general public
During the academic year 2019-20, the RNCM theme #WeAreMigrants celebrated the stories and creative output of musicians who have left their homes and explored the impact of migration on their music. Our events series ran for the whole of the 2019-2020 academic year (full programme here) and involved sharing stories of and with students, staff members, alumni and visiting artists.
Every year, RNCM piano students in years 3 and 4 work with primary schoolchildren in low socio-economic areas of Greater Manchester, to provide free piano lessons (as part of the degree programme module which develops pedagogy and advanced teaching skills).
3. Environmental responsibility
In July 2021, the RNCM was awarded £3.4million from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), working in partnership with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and funded by Salix. The grant provided an opportunity for the College to vastly improve the quality and efficiency of its estate and also develop a forward strategy around the route to decarbonisation.
The RNCM Eco project, a collaborative project between RNCM staff and students, addressed the question of 'How may music projects enable positive environmental action?' and included student focus groups, outreach work in Ashton Sixth Form college, Tameside (workshops with around 60 sixth form students, who created their own work on the topic of the natural environment and ecology), and conversations with experts in the field of music and climate change.
Aspect 3: Results
The impact of the RNCM’s access and participation projects such as the RNCM Pathfinder are monitored through the feedback mechanisms described above, and they are evident through data on further and higher education pathways for these students including (but not exclusively) recruitment into the RNCM’s own degree programmes.
The work continues to raise awareness of the central role music can play in social justice matters. In line with the Strategic Plan, the RNCM supports students in developing new initiates which have social impact, and RNCM students are trained in how to use their skills to enable local growth and regeneration. For example:
Music and health: The RNCM has been training and sending students out to work in children’s hospitals for over 10 years, with industry partners including Jessie’s Fund and Songbirds Music UK.
12 RNCM piano students participated in a performance of Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerrilla” in a new arrangement made by RNCM Deputy Head of Keyboard Studies, Dr Adam Swayne, for six pianos. The public performance at the 2021 ‘Reunite’ Festival (onsite and online) showcased the RNCM’s ‘Underrepresented’ mission, alongside its commitment to social impact more widely.
Image 5. Performance by 6 RNCM pianists of Dr Adam Swayne’s arrangement of Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerrilla”
The RNCM is a partner in the NHS and universities partnership for student mental health: Greater Manchester Universities Student Mental Health Service | News and Events | Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS FT (gmmh.nhs.uk). This includes access to advice for students, and research undertaken by Dr Sara Ascenso, Lecturer in Musicians’ Health and Wellbeing at the RNCM.
The charity Olympias Music Foundation, founded and directed by RNCM graduate Dr Jo-Yee Cheung Olympias Music Foundation (OMF) is an award-winning music charity based in Manchester. OMF works to champion diversity in music – from instrumental lessons for children on free-school meals, to community choirs for women and school children from different backgrounds, and believes that everyone should be given the opportunity to participate in music. Since 2015, they have delivered over 12,000+ free music lessons to children in Manchester, engaging hundreds more through workshops and performances. They have received the Creativity in the Community Prize (Be Proud Awards 2019), Promotion of Equality and Diversity Prize (Manchester Culture Award 2018) and Grassroots Champion Award (Community Integration Awards 2017). They are also recipients of support from bodies including the Arts Council England, The National Lottery Community Fund.
The charity SoundUp Arts, which makes creative resources for people living with dementia and those who support them, was founded and is directed by RNCM graduate Lucy Temby
A large-scale ongoing research project with international collaborators on music and Parkinson’s. Results have been published and are in preparation for multiple journal articles. Also, results were shared in a public performance at the RNCM, the ‘Playlist for Parkinson’s live!’ (funded by a £3,000 grant from SEMPRE) on 14th June 2022, which involved: 1) RNCM students performing pieces of music used by people with Parkinson’s in their daily lives, 2) RNCM students interviewing people with Parkinson’s about how music features in their lives, and 3) RNCM senior lecturer in music psychology Dr Michelle Phillips and collaborators from the University of Manchester and Lucerne Academy of Applied Arts presenting the research findings.
Image 6 and 7. Photographs of the Playlist for Parkinson’s Live! event at RNCM 14th June 2022, showing RNCM student performers, and interviewers interviewing people with Parkinson’s
For further information, please send queries to research@rncm.ac.uk.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Public and community engagement is embedded into everything the RNCM does as a higher education institution and a cultural venue; in the RNCM 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, ‘Society’ is one of three strategic priorities alongside ‘Music’ and ‘Students’. The plan identifies RNCM Engage as the ‘locus for outreach activity’, as a way to maximise ‘the impact of the College’s work in the community and promote social cohesion and prosperity’. Public and community engagement takes place in all areas of RNCM activity, from Performance and Programming, Outreach, the Curriculum, to Research and Knowledge Exchange. The RNCM works closely with community and industry partners in Manchester, the region, as well as nationally and internationally.
Aspect 1: Strategy
The RNCM Strategic Plan commits to undertaking activity connected to public and community engagement, and specifically activity which will:
Transform the lives of others in society by developing highly-skilled creative practitioners with social and cultural awareness; outstanding young musicians with a genuine passion and commitment to make a positive impact through music
Ensure that performances are programmed in an inclusive way that reflects the diverse communities of Manchester and the North
Advocate for the positive impact of music-making on health and well-being in society
Commit to sharing our knowledge; developing an ambitious portfolio of targeted and impactful knowledge exchange and consultancy activities of relevance and benefit to those in our local community and to society as a whole
Build on our collaboration with partners in Manchester and the City Region to extend the reach and scale of our impact; identifying opportunities to expand RNCM activities off-site and contributing to the growth of cultural activity and inward investment
Place the climate and environmental impact at the heart of our decision-making
Image 1. Public performance by RNCM Symphony Orchestra
Aspect 2: Support
Staff work connected to public and community engagement is shared and showcased at the RNCM Annual Staff Conference and annual Learning and Teaching Conference. Additionally, staff may apply annually for a Teaching Award to develop their practice, and to the Staff Development Fund for training.
Case study of staff and student support: Belonging, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
RNCM recognises that music is in every culture and is committed to building a diverse community of staff and students. Along with the Belonging, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy, the RNCM publishes a Belonging, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report and details commitments to and details of EDI initiatives on the website. Commitments to BEDI are also evidenced in the RNCM’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Gender Pay Gap Reports. The RNCM is also a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer.
The RNCM established ‘Underrepresented’ in 2020, a group of staff and students at the RNCM who celebrate overlooked musical voices.
Image 2. Diagram charting the development of the RNCM Underrepresented staff-student group 2020-21
RNCM student digital ambassador Tessa Tang said of the group:
“Personally, I think this is a brilliant step forward in the institution to deconstruct the boundaries of what separates people beyond what we see on the surface. Underrepresented groups exist within race, sexuality, gender and people with disabilities, and this definition will continue to evolve over time. College setting this group up not only fosters a culture of embracing inclusivity amongst all, but more importantly highlights the much needed change within systemic structures, and enables the rest of us at the RNCM to learn about it too.”
Image 3. Poster for programme of Underrepresented events planned in the year 2021-22, to run at RNCM 2022-23
The RNCM established The Williams-Howard Prize in 2022 to celebrate and encourage the study and performance of art songs of composers of African heritage. This is the first of its type in Europe, celebrating singers and collaborative pianists. As part of the Prize the RNCM has also established a repository of art songs of African Heritage to encourage diversification of repertoire across the RNCM and beyond. Additionally, RNCM Vocal Professor, Michael Harper, was one of seven researchers awarded a grant by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to celebrate the work of ethnically diverse composers.
Aspect 3: Activity
RNCM Performance Programme
The extensive performance programme at the RNCM includes multiple public events every day of the year – evening performances (by ensembles including the RNCM Session Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, Big Band), large-scale annual events (including two fully staged professional opera productions every year), and other events including two lunchtime concerts per week, and multiple other Spotlight concerts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when public performances were not possible in the standard format, the RNCM scheduled an extensive series of live broadcasts, radio shows, and other online activity to share with RNCM audiences and other stakeholders. The RNCM also offers spaces within the building for hire, for example, to local music hubs, schools, amateur ensembles, and acts organised by regional, national, and international music promoters. The RNCM professional engagements database also allows RNCM student musicians to be available to book to perform throughout the region and nationally.
StART Entrepreneurship Project
The RNCM’s world-leading entrepreneurship education was recently recognised when it was awarded £902,153 from the Office for Students and Research England (UK governmental bodies) to lead a project exploring the most effective ways to train creative industries students in entrepreneurial skills. This two-year ‘StART Entrepreneurship project’ (2020-22) was led by Dr Michelle Phillips (Head of Enterprise (Academic)) at the RNCM, and was a partnership with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and University of the Arts London.
Key outcomes and headlines from the StART Entrepreneurship Project: 19,831 hours of student engagement with StART activity, 3,243 students engaged, 233 new industry partners, 798 events, 213 new materials and toolkits, peer-reviewed research publications, invited talks and keynotes, podcasts and conference presentations (full list here), new networks (e.g., Dr Michelle Phillips, Principal Investigator, has been invited to share findings with colleagues in Colorado US, Rochester US, Brisbane, Helsinki, and Paris).
Student testimonies: ‘I am so grateful for the StART project. The whole programme was invaluable to me and has equipped me with the skills needed to pave my way into a music industry that is so rapidly changing. Without the inspiration from this wonderful scheme, I would have never been able to get to where I am today with my new charity Musicians’ Minds Together’ – 3rd year undergraduate student.
Collaboration with Science and Industry Museum (SIM), Manchester
The RNCM has a longstanding relationship with SIM, and RNCM academics have written blogs for museum visitors, presented events at the annual Science Festival and half term events, and engaged visitors in research at evening ‘Lates’ events and family ‘Platform for Investigation’ days.
Between 2019 and 2022, RNCM Head of Enterprise (Academic) and senior lecturer in music psychology Dr Michelle Phillips worked with SIM on the design of the ‘Turn It Up: The Power of Music’ exhibition, which opened in October 2022. Dr Phillips advised on the content of the exhibition, and her own research on music and emotion, and music and Parkinson’s, features in the exhibition (which will relocate to the Science Museum London in May 2023, and will then tour exhibition spaces in Europe).
RNCM Research Forums
The RNCM schedules weekly Research Forums, open and free to attend by the general public and offered both in person and online, and available to view subsequently on the RNCM YouTube channel.
RNCM Research
RNCM staff and students engage in world leading research, with community, music industry, general public, and other external partners as an essential part of cutting-edge research questions. Examples include:
Collaborative research led by the RNCM with partners the Universities of Manchester and Salford, and music industry partner Manchester Camerata, exploring the neuroscientific, physiological and behavioural responses to live vs livestreamed music (see article in The Strad here)
The RNCM was awarded £914,000 from Research England’s Expanding Excellence in England Fund (E3) to support its ground-breaking interdisciplinary research centre, PRiSM, the RNCM Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music
Construction of the RNCM’s new technologically advanced ‘Studio 8’, which includes the UK’s first Meyer Constellation system in higher education, was made possible by the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s Catalyst Fund/The Office for Students and generous support from the Garfield Weston Foundation
Image 4. RNCM Deputy Head of Popular Music Dr Stuart McCallum discusses his research on immersive audio in the RNCM’s Studio 8 with open day visitors
‘Music and Mutation’ – a collaborative research project between the RNCM and the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, which involved the creation of a new piece of music with an RNCM composer and a string trio, that represented processes of genetic mutation through new music. The project and new composition was presented as part of the Manchester Science Festival 2018, in a concert as part of the Didsbury Coffee Concerts in South Manchester, and to school kids at New Scientist Live! 2022 event (12-14 March 2022). This event had 6,206 attendees including 2,337 teachers and students from schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged students (95%). Comments from attendees included: ‘It was very engaging and I learned about so many interesting topics.’ ‘There was so many hands-on activities for the children and a variety of exhibits.’
Image 5. RNCM Head of Enterprise (Academic) sharing music and mutation research with school children at New Scientist Live! 2022 event
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Considering RNCM‘s strategy to develop global citizens with social, cultural and environmental awareness, the intended outcomes and impacts of RNCM public and community activities are:
Outcomes
Students learn to apply their skills in new contexts, making a contribution to society
Participants experience performances and music making at the RNCM; have greater awareness of the benefits of music
Impacts
Graduates are highly skilled creative practitioners, with a genuine passion and commitment to make a difference, using their skills to enhance the lives of others in society through music
Participants’ experience of the RNCM is one of an inclusive, respectful, open and accessible HE institution
Image 6. RNCM students during a workshop
Evaluation of public and community activities against RNCM strategic objectives is undertaken through student and staff surveys, participant questionnaires and through interviews and written feedback. Feedback on Engage activities, student placements, and research public engagement activities shows that audiences, participants, collaborators and communities benefitted from and were changed by the activities. The collaborations led to new, creative ways of working and interacting with audiences.
RNCM’s Marketing and Programming department collate quantitative data for event attendance, participant segmentation, website analytics and media coverage. This feeds directly back into the development of future projects and into the strategic monitoring for the Access and Participation strategy, Artistic strategy, Engage strategy, Marketing and Communications Strategy and the Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy. The Deputy Principal (Performance and Programmes) has overall responsibility for the Engage committee and reports outcomes to the RNCM’s Executive Committee, and through this Committee to the Board of Governors.
The RNCM leads an Interplay network, and an International Benchmarking Group (IBG) of eight of the world’s leading conservatoires around the world, with which is regularly shares best practice. Its primary aim is to enhance the professional and personal development of young musicians through the sharing of best practice, ensuring that its member institutions remain at the forefront of conservatoire education and training globally. These are examples of a way in which RNCM evaluates its own activity, including its public and community engagement, against the international sector.
Image 7. Orchestra comprised of RNCM students and students from other international conservatoires as part of the International Benchmarking Group
RNCM evaluation methodologies have developed significantly over the last 3 years, and this is now built into all large-scale projects, usually in the form of a postdoctoral research being employed to evaluate the activity. A case study example follows:
StART Entrepreneurship Project evaluation
Two postdoctoral researchers were employed as part of the project to evaluate the main findings. Key learning outcomes regarding how to embed entrepreneurship training in creative degree programmes include:
1. Terminology - use terms which resonate with students, e.g., 'creative innovation'
2. Factor in individual artistic identity, meet students where they are, embrace their values, passions, and beliefs
3. Access and inclusion - barriers exist to students accessing HE activity in and outside of the curriculum, including some which are difficult to remove (e.g. our research showed that barriers include caring responsibilities and part time jobs)
4. Students as partners and advisors - treat students as colleagues in the journey, workshops rather than lectures
5. The importance of alumni - alumni may be more relatable to students as guest speakers than bringing in established celebrities
6. Money matters - it is important to teach students skills around money (as they are likely to have freelance income) right from the first year of their studies
7. Social entrepreneurship - this generation of students are very driven by the desire to create social change
8. Embedding needed - it is important to include entrepreneurship training in degree programme curricula, not just as extra-curricular activities (for accessibility, and to emphasise that these skills are essential)
9. Importance of institutional buy in – important that there is belief in the value and importance of entrepreneurship education at senior manager level
10. Knowledge sharing across institutions – useful for institutions to work with one another, and learn from others in the sector
Image 8. RNCM Head of Enterprise (Academic), Fellow in Creative and Professional Practice, Deputy Principal (Performance and Programmes) presenting at RNCM Open Day 2022 on how the findings of the StART project feed into all aspects of student training at the RNCM
Aspect 5: Building on success
The RNCM continues to act on the outcomes of public and community activities, and to plan an monitor these via the RNCM Access and Participation Plan. As above, the RNCM Strategic Plan commits to undertaking activity which will:
Transform the lives of others in society
Programme in an inclusive way that reflects the diverse communities of Manchester and the North
Advocate for the positive impact of music-making on health and well-being in society
Commit to sharing our knowledge
Exploit the potential of technology to extend our reach into society and the positive impact music can make on people’s lives
Build on our collaboration with partners in Manchester and the City Region
Place the climate and environmental impact at the heart of our decision-making
Through evidence from HESA metrics, RNCM continues to benchmark its level of engagement success in relation to peer institutions and the KEF Arts and Design cluster. Externally results of RNCM public engagement are shared with the RNCM network of partners and committees. Optimisation of the design, delivery and impact of public and community engagement is ongoing and has been prioritised in the current RNCM 2020-25 strategy: ‘We will lead targeted research on audience development and engagement; collaborating with the music profession to address priorities and identify meaningful mechanisms to share research findings’.
For further information, please send queries to research@rncm.ac.uk.
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