Our Artist Development provision is here to prepare you for a sustainable career in the music profession
We know how competitive the music business is for our graduates. That's why the focus of the Artist Development provision is to empower you – the next generation of professional musicians – to make the most of your individual skills when you leave.
With specialisms and contacts across the music world, our team has the expertise to ensure that you leave here as fully rounded, creative and adaptable musicians, with the tools to gain employment even in unpredictable times.
Seminars, workshops and courses
Our sessions and courses are designed to develop your core artist skills, self-knowledge and professional awareness. They cover a comprehensive range of practical subjects, including preparing professional documents, auditioning well, how to get funding, working with online content, self-employed finances, how to get teaching work and how to practise effectively.
We consider your creative and career options, with talks and workshops on effective concert programming, orchestral life, working with promoters, making audition self-tapes, and producing and creating your own projects.
It is important that we give you a broad range of experiences to draw on, because you never know what direction your music-making might take you.
With this in mind, as well as our workshops and courses, there are ongoing one-off sessions throughout the year, honing in on more specialised areas, such as how to live and work in EU countries, West End work, creating and editing audio and video, improvising, and writing for video games, TV and film. Our events and talks are run by the team, by other Academy specialists, and by invited experts from all fields of music, including established solo artists, orchestral fixers, musicians who have started their own companies, agents and festival directors. Many of these speakers are Academy Alumni, particularly in a series of rolling talks called Ask the Artist and Alumni Stories.
We also have a growing list of industry partners, with whom we collaborate on creative schemes every year.
Students Create Festival
Artist Development also runs the Students Create Festival every year. This is the chance for students to make and publicly perform works across genres, with an expert mentor assigned to each project.
Watch: Students Create Festival
Current Partnerships
A new pilot partnership between SBC and the Academy.
In the first iteration of the scheme, SBC artist in residence Daniel Pioro will work with students, exploring evolving creative possibilities for the 21st century musician through a series of workshops, mentoring and a final public sharing at the Purcell Room.
Students will also receive a professional mentoring session from SBC’s Head of Classical Music, Toks Dada.
An intensive three-day course with Glyndebourne’s artistic director Stephen Langridge, in which composers, instrumentalists and singers create new work together, and present it to an Academy audience in a final sharing.
Students are also invited to performances at Glyndebourne, and Glyndebourne on tour.
A three-day workshop within a flexible ensemble structure, supported by players from The Multi-Story Orchestra.
These collaborative sessions involve working with Multi-Story players to find creative ways to share music with audiences who might have no pre-existing experience of classical music.
Artist Development Team
We’re here to give one-to-one career guidance.
Our team has specialisms in orchestral life, chamber music, opera, new music, interdisciplinary work, producing and fundraising, so there is almost nothing we can’t help you with. During the undergraduate programme we ask you to attend a meeting with one of us to assess and discuss your creative and career development.
By the end of your time at the Academy, you should feel confident to make bold artistic choices, and to make your career in music whatever you want it to be.