Strengthening music in society: Training musicians of the future

Principal Helena Gaunt was the keynote speaker at Strengthening Music in Society: The way forward for UK Conservatoires today – a conference bringing together key voices and perspectives from across the classical music sector to address the challenges and opportunities currently facing UK conservatoires and the classical music system.

2021 has been extraordinary, any number of unpredictable events (both wonderful and devastating) at an already eventful time in our lives – but one stands out for me as a ray of hope. Over the summer, a herd of a hundred elephants made their way into central London from the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu.

Beautifully sculpted life-size creatures, each crafted from close observation of a live animal and ingeniously made from an invasive weed, lantana, the Co-Existence project was masterminded by RWCMD graduate Shubhra Nayar and Ruth Ganesh.

The elephants are travelling around the world, inviting people to meet them, walk amongst them, feel close to a herd in nature and understand what it is to make space for us all to co-exist on this planet.

Cleverly, the elephant sculptures are paying their way, raising over £3m through the London project, with profits being reinvested into the communities of local craftspeople who created them and into human-wildlife co-existence projects.

It’s an inspiring sight, exquisite artistically, and with a clear social imperative. The work, majestically positioned outside Buckingham Palace and across some of London’s major parks, was impossible to ignore.

In the year that would have been his 100^th birthday, Raymond Williams’ words continue to ring as true today as they ever were: Culture is Ordinary.

Director of Music Tim Rhys-Evans and his team have come up with an innovative way forward, shaking up any notion of rarefied exclusivity and focusing on developing musicians as ‘makers’ in society: being immersed in communities, creative collaboration, entrepreneurship as integral parts of their artistic development, and with emphasis on audience diversity among other things. This is core to our new BMus offer.

Entirely in line with the spirit of the new national curriculum, and with the deep roots of Wales’ cultural traditions, we can show beyond doubt that Wales is bold and unapologetic, a leader in arts and culture – unafraid to be different.

As a world-class college, we focus on the often-assumed conflict, but – in fact – natural relationship between being expert and being inclusive. These belong together and they need to work together more and more if the arts are truly to be for and of everyone, not just the fortunate few.

These are priorities such as: artistic autonomy and craft expertise on the one hand, and on the other hand social and societal aspects of music-making, whether this concerns connecting with a range of different audiences or going further, for example proactively to address inequalities, loneliness and isolation, or to explore major societal challenges such as migration, climate change, conflict and violence.

Raymond Williams wrote Culture is Ordinary in 1958, so why has so little changed in reality? Perhaps in part a reluctance or inability in too many quarters fully to connect these values and priorities. But right now, there is an imperative as never before, and the conditions in Wales are promising. We need to make the very best of that chance.

From our North Road campus and arts centre at RWCMD, we are privileged to work with a shining example of this kind of paradigm shift in action.

Manchester Collective is an award-winning flexible ensemble of brilliant musicians with diverse backgrounds and influences, committed to immersion within communities. Rather than pursuing their music and then working out who audience is, they flip it to ask first where they can make a difference and then get to work artistically from their core values, repertoires and skills.

Cleverly combining social and artistic purpose, they have developed numerous innovative projects through lockdown that have captured hearts and minds. And they are now also contributing to transformational change for our new BMus.

To return to the elephants, the core message of what can be seen as an environmental art campaign is that there is room for both humankind and nature on this planet. This is just one form of an artistic making process immersed in society.

There’s room for so many more and innovative forms that have yet to be imagined, ways for artists to be immersed in their communities locally and globally.

In the summer, we’ll be sharing more of our vision and inviting others to engage with us to develop it and move forward to make it happen.

Raymond Williams wrote,