The commercial world

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) recently opened its newly developed facilities which include the Dora Stoutzker Hall and the Richard Burton Theatre, adding a public-facing arts centre to its established training facilities for performance and related industries. This change brings with it the challenge of how to balance operating a public arts venue alongside a National Conservatoire, ensuring that educational needs and student performances coexist in harmony with commercial hires. It has been important to ensure that students and staff have been directly involved in this journey from inward-facing educational establishment to a public-facing arts centre that runs alongside the training facilities that invites in the wider community to the college.

The new commercial hire and the creative programmes have to meet ambitious targets to ensure they maintain their current 5% contribution to college income. These programmes have to complement and not compete with each other. Despite careful planning prior to the completion of the new build, tweeks are still being made. For example, it quickly became clear that it was necessary to run the majority of commercial hires outside term time so that they did not interfere with the students’ timetable and use of the facilities, giving the students and staff ownership of these new spaces while they are on site.

Events management students can now work in a professional capacity, dealing with artists’ demands

Likewise, the creative performance programme is constantly developing. Some ideas have not gained momentum, such as the commuter concerts, while others, like the seasonal concerts, family arts festival and free Friday Jazz Time, have become a regular part of the scheduling.
To ensure students gain maximum benefit from this new arts centre, training sits at the heart of all programme planning. When an artist is booked for a public event there is always a clear benefit to students, developing close working relationships with academics and visiting artists, while developing the student’s critical facilities. For example, when the soprano Dame Anne Evans came to RWCMD for a public event she also gave a student masterclass, offering them a personal insight into working as a professional singer.

At the heart of the students’ training is the simulation of professional practice. The new venues mean that students are now not just learning in their isolated areas of study in the classroom, but synthesising their skills into working on events themselves. For example, events management students can now work in a professional capacity, dealing with artists’ demands, strategic challenges and audience problems in a real-life situation.

Students also benefit from exposure to a new kind of audience. Previously they performed to a limited, friendly audience of parents and friends. They now perform in front of a critical, arts-savvy audience, giving them a very different experience, and adding to their professionalism and employability.

An increasing amount of our commercial hires are booking students as part of the ‘Hire a performer’ scheme. This gives music students valuable experience of the contract system that they will encounter when they leave college, liaising with clients, sorting out their own equipment and scheduling their time, all without a tutor looking over their shoulder, while earning money and making contacts that are often outside the arts sector.

We look forward to the challenge of continuing to balance the student’s extensive training experience as it co-exists with a vibrant and exciting public arts centre. With careful planning and programming these world-class new venues have enhanced the college ‘brand’ within the conservatoire sector, and raised its profile within the arts sector, attracting world-class performers, commercial hires and new audiences.