Professor Helena Gaunt, Vice Principal and Director of Academic Affairs at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama
With rapid change an accepted norm, renewing our practices in Higher Education increasingly demands profound reflection. This is critical for the arts and humanities not least in contexts of major funding cuts and perceptions in some quarters of irrelevance. In the performing arts particular challenges lie in continuing to champion fundamental values of human connection, artistic expression, creative passion and determination to excel alongside enabling fresh thinking outside the box, artistic and educational innovation, and interdisciplinary risk-taking. These challenges ask us to clarify what we must take with us as we move forwards, what new activities we can take on, and sometimes most significantly what we can/must leave behind.
it is more important than ever then that we deepen exchange and build community across disciplines in order to make a step-change collaboratively to strengthen the voices of our disciplines in contemporary Higher Education, and embody their vital place in shifting societies. There is no doubt that some of the best artists and creative practitioners are highly reflective in their work (and some take this further into arenas of practice-based research). Nevertheless, education and training has not always championed such reflective practice, and at times it has been side-lined into supporting studies disconnected from practical activity where it easily becomes marginalised or de-valued; indeed some concerns continue that reflection obstructs the creative process. The task of continuing to evolve meaningful and generative forms of reflection for all those engaged in these disciplines remains a considerable one. Equally, the task of bringing such valuable developments into wide professional use within the creative industries is significant.
The art of the reflective practitioner sits at the core of what it is to lead the arts and humanities in higher education (as individuals in our own creative practice, in teaching, in developing curricula and in thinking institutionally), just as it underpins the development of successful graduates. The Reflective Conservatoire Conference has been grappling with these issues in the performing arts since 2006, working at the processes and positioning of reflection at personal, curriculum and institutional levels. Held triennially, its fourth edition will be held from February 26 to March 1, 2015. This will engage with several elements of the paradigm shift that we are currently experiencing:
- In the interface between higher education and the professions, rigid conceptions of transmission or apprenticeship with essentially one-way traffic from professional to student are making way for more dynamic spaces of two-way exchange and shared exploration. In addition, a renaissance in interdisciplinary work and increasing appetite for divergent thinking about performance and relationships between artists and audiences mean that higher education is becoming a “go to” laboratory space for experimentation and risk-taking encounters.
- Practitioners are operating on a global stage in the arts and are increasingly moved to produce work that crosses cultures and dismantles traditional boundaries. Higher Education inevitably needs to reflect this global landscape.
- Assumptions about the purpose and value of the performing arts are constantly being tested in such fluid environments. This highlights the importance of establishing genuine roots. Ultimately, it is the fundamental values of the disciplines and the core skills embedded within these that will provide the sustainability of the disciplines and support artists through life long careers. Emerging practitioners undoubtedly need to embody their values, and be comfortable with articulating them and reappraising them continually.
Our theme for the conference this year is therefore ambitious and challenging: “Creativity and Changing Cultures”. Within this, we will have sessions on visioning future artistic learning environments, exchange and learning through the body across different art forms, creative entrepreneurship and connecting with audiences, supporting peer learning and communities of practice, transforming skills of feedback, deepening enquiry and research as artistic practitioners, and the role of improvisation in developing core musicianship/artistic craft. We will showcase innovative work and recent research, using these to stimulate debate about how we continue to develop performing arts education. We will juxtapose practical workshops, research papers, performances and roundtables, and will generate dialogue and collaboration between diverse professionals in the arts, knowing that creative exchange and critical reflection between them will catalyze fresh thinking and new perspectives.
We have a leading role to play in repositioning the multi-layered value of our institutions. Experience in the arts, for example, of embedding practical and professional experience within programmes, navigating individual and collective creativity, or embracing novel assessment practices that catalyze reflective practice have much to offer young people, professional practices and wider society.