Florence Quartet

Kirsty Devaney is a Birmingham-based composer. She graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2013 with a BMus (Hons) in composition, where she studied with Joe Cutler, Howard Skempton and Ed Bennett. Now working as a professional composer and practitioner she is passionate and committed about promoting creative music making as something we all have the capacity to do.

Her work ranges from composing for professional contemporary music groups and amateur and youth ensembles, to working with film and electronics. Her music has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and in 2011, aged 20, she was shortlisted for a British Composer Award for her work for CoMA London.

As a music practitioner Devaney has worked with organisations including Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. In 2013 she founded the Young Composers Project, which has since reached over 200 young people and trained local emerging composers to work in educational settings. Devaney also works as an education consultant with Music Education Solutions, delivering CPD to primary and secondary teachers across the UK. She is currently completing her PhD at Birmingham City University, investigating the assessment of composing in schools, and was recently awarded the prestigious Anna Craft Award for research into ‘Creativity in Education’ from the British Education Research Association.