12 minute read
Research projects in higher education
A conference in Bangor on Women’s Work in Music, Coventry University’s report on creative freelancers and the establishment of Scotland’s Singing for Health Network are three of the innovative works carried out in our higher education institutions during the pandemic
Above: Clara Schumann playing with Joseph Joachim, painted by Adolphe von Menzel, 1854 Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons
Above: Morfydd Owen Photo: Rhian Davies Collection
Left (clockwise from top): Dr Rhiannon Mathias, Nick Henry, Liesbeth Tip and Brianna Robertson-Kirkland
Left (below): Women of Note: images of women composers whose lives span 300 years Photo: Courtesy of Diana Ambache womenofnote.co.uk While the pandemic brought many challenges over the last two years, it did not stop the continuation of the groundbreaking work that is being carried out in the UK’s higher education institutions. In this feature we will look at three projects that closely affect musicians.
It has already become a cliché to note that the silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic has been its impact on the development of digital communications, writes Clare Stevens. A recent beneficiary of this revolution was the Third International Conference on Women’s Work in Music (WWM), hosted by Bangor University’s Department of Music, Drama and Performance in the first week of September. Situated on the north-west tip of Wales, Bangor is easily accessible only from Liverpool and (by fast ferry across the Irish Sea) from Dublin. But because its 30+ sessions took place on Zoom this year, more than 90 delegates from all over the world were able to attend.
The contrast with the previous two events in 2017 and 2019 is extraordinary, admits the conference’s instigator and director, Dr Rhiannon Mathias, lecturer and music fellow at the university. ‘While a sizable number of international delegates attended them in person, I think we had just one online contributor in the past, who probably connected with us on Skype,’ she says. ’This time we had participants from all over the United States, and from Canada, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Spain, Poland and more, as well as from the UK and Ireland.’
The range of topics under discussion was equally wide-ranging. The lives and music of female composers and performers of the past such as Pauline Viardot, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Wieck Schumann and lesser-known figures like Caroline de Belleville, Marie Grandval and the South Indian courtesan and musician Bangalore Nagarathnamma were explored in the context of an over-arching theme of ‘virtuosa’. There were sessions on the contributions of women to contemporary piano music in Mexico and to music for the synagogue; on the unionisation of women musicians in early 20th-century France; and on media representations of women composers in Soviet Czechoslovakia. Some topics were more overtly feminist or addressed complex issues relating to gender and sexuality; others looked at the challenges still faced by women working in a range of different musical contexts.
The inaugural WWM Conference marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Grace Williams (1906-77), one of the first professional Welsh composers of the 20th century to attain international recognition. While the main focus is on academic musicology, Mathias says she was keen from the start to widen the scope of the events, inviting representatives of music industry bodies, administrators, funders, publishers, journalists and broadcasters to take part.
‘For example, a particular highlight in 2017 was a presentation by Edwina Wolstencroft on her work as editor of BBC Radio 3’s International Women’s Day celebrations. This year one of the keynote presentations was given by film and video-game composer Eímear Noone, who in 2020 was the first woman to conduct the music for the Oscars ceremony. We also had quite a lot of papers relating to jazz, which was exciting as we hadn’t really featured that previously. I particularly enjoyed one from Pauline Black, who is based in Scotland, about introducing school students to jazz improvisation.’
Conference partners for 2021 were the Royal Musical Association, the ISM, the PRS for Music, and the Ambache Charitable Trust which promotes performances of music written by women, as well as the Welsh Arts Council, the Welsh Government and National Lottery and Tyˆ Cerdd, which promotes and celebrates the music of Wales. Deborah Keyser, Director of Tyˆ Cerdd and current President of the ISM, joined a panel chaired by ISM Chief Executive Deborah Annetts to reflect on the impact of the global pandemic on women’s work in music. You can read more about this session in a blog post by Annetts on the ISM website: ism.org/blog/the-ism-chiefexecutive-on-the-ongoing-challenges-facingwomen-in-the-music-industry
To read the report visit: creativeunited. org.uk/services/thevalue-of-creativefreelancers
Just one performance was included in the programme, but it was a very special one, streamed from the historic Powis Hall and acknowledging the centenary of Bangor University’s music department. Mezzo-soprano Sioned Terry and pianist Iwan Llewelyn-Jones gave a recital of songs by five Welsh women composers whose lives spanned that century: Morfydd Llwyn Owen (1891-1918), Grace Williams (1906-77), Dilys Elwyn-Edwards (1918-2012), Rhian Samuel (b.1944) and Terry herself (b.1975).
‘It was wonderful to introduce these beautiful songs to such a large and appreciative international audience,’ says Mathias, ‘and to hear people say that none of them would be out of place at the Wigmore Hall.’
Mathias is the daughter of the Welsh composer William Mathias, and a proud custodian of his legacy. But the focus of her own academic work is women composers; her publications include Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and Twentieth-Century British Music: A Blest Trio of Sirens (2012) and she has edited the Routledge Handbook on Women’s Work in Music, which grew out of the first WWM conference and is due to be published later this year.
‘There are 44 chapters, each by a different author,’ she says. ‘I’m very conscious of the pioneering work on women in music done by people like Sophie Fuller (who has written one of the chapters), Nicola LeFanu and Jennifer Fowler, but there is so much more to find out about female composers and performers of the past who did not receive the recognition they deserved in their lifetimes.’
Understanding the Lived Experience and Value Generation of Creative Freelancers, Coventry University
Nick Henry, Professor of Economic Geography at Coventry University, looks back at its research and report into creative freelancers – an ever-growing group of people within the UK work market, and one which encompasses many musicians.
In late 2019, now known as pre-pandemic, here at Coventry University we won a research award from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre to research creative freelancing. At that time we knew creative freelancing was a large, growing and critical aspect of the much-lauded cultural and creative industries. We knew also that limited data, understanding and recognition was afforded to this varied community of workers, including concerning issues around income and career insecurity.
Our recent report Mind the Understanding Gap: the Value of Creative Freelancers, published by ACE NPO and Sector Support Organisation Creative United, is based upon over 100 hours of interviews with 86 self-identified creative freelancers across Coventry, Northumberland and Waltham Forest. In these interviews the freelancers described their motivations, how they work, why that way and what it means for their business and personal lives – in short, their lived experiences as creative freelancers.
What we didn’t know as we prepared to start our interviewing in early 2020 was that for too many creative freelancers their work and income was about to fall off a cliff. Their vulnerability within the supply chains and talent pipelines of our word-class sector – and the lack of understanding of their business models – was to be made glaringly apparent. Our interviewing was deliberately delayed until mid-2020, by which time, notwithstanding the largest economy-wide and sector-specific interventions ever seen in most of our lifetimes, large numbers of creative freelancers had fallen regularly through the structural cracks in support.
The report sets out how the UK workforce of creative freelancers contributes significantly, and in many ways, to local and national economies, communities, and culture. Their cultural and creative activities deliver self-development and well-being, the joy and buzz of shared cultural participation, and citizenship and community outcomes, entrepreneurship and market making. In today’s place-based policy frameworks especially, recognition of this richness of contributions and value, and understanding of how different creative freelancers generate such value, should attract greater levels of investment, funding and support.
The report proposes a typology to better present the range of creative freelancers and the characteristics that define their (business) motivations, and their modes of working. It categorises creative freelancers into creative entrepreneurs, creative contributors, work-life balancers, precarious projecteers, creative ecologists and community creatives.
The aim of this typology is to help national government, creative and cultural sector institutions, and local place-based policy makers build an environment that is better designed and funded to support, raise, and sustain the contribution made to place, economies, and culture by creative freelancers. One ‘silver lining’ of the pandemic has been the organic and impressive response by the sector to both support and advocate for creative freelancers never to be under the radar again. Our work adds to this caucus, and viewed through the lens of the typology we put forward 10 recommendations for national government, creative and cultural sector institutions and local place-based policy.
At national level, the experience of (creative) freelancers highlights bigger questions on the changing nature of the labour market – and the extent to which existing systems of employment policy, tax and welfare are suited to these shifts, including income and insurance schemes to deal with economic instability.
At organisational, institutional and business level, it is about better business practices by the diverse array of contracting organisations. It is about their stakeholder – as well as shareholder –responsibilities to their supply chains, including creative freelancers, customers and communities. A post-pandemic world may indeed be building back the requirements of a ‘social license to operate’ across swathes of economy and society.
At the local level, we have seen an active shift to place-based policy and the search for ‘more prosperous, fairer and resilient places’. What our research shows is how creative freelancers can deliver to such place-based agendas, across economic, social and cultural value.
In summary, we believe the report provides an insightful statement on why and how you might invest in, fund and support the variety that is creative freelancers; this critical – yet precarious – part of our much-lauded creative and cultural industries. Our hope also is that our proposed typology does hold traction with creative freelancers. That they can see themselves in the report and that the report closes the gap between their lived experiences and the funding and (design of) policy frameworks, programmes and projects.
Our partners in the research, motivated to close the understanding gap, were Creative United, Coventry City of Culture Trust, London Borough of Waltham Forest, Northumberland County Council and the Warwick Institute of Employment Research.
Scotland’s Singing for Health Network
Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and Liesbeth Tip (University of Edinburgh) recall the work that occurred last year to establish Scotland’s Singing for Health Network.
In December 2020, with Sophie Boyd from the University of Glasgow, we were awarded a Royal Society of Edinburgh network grant to establish Scotland’s Singing for Health Network. Singing for health is an umbrella term that refers to the use of singing to help support and manage a range of illnesses. There are a wide range of singing for health practices that help with the management of different conditions, such as respiratory illness, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, mental health difficulties, and cancer. Singing for health has been developing over the last 20 years in the UK and it can be recommended as a form of social prescription, where health professionals refer people to a range of local, nonclinical services to support their health and wellbeing.
Interest in developing a singing for health network in Scotland followed the Spheres of Singing online interdisciplinary conference in May 2020. This event attracted over 400 registered attendees, and dedicated a day of workshops and talks to Singing for Health and Wellbeing. A huge range of research and practice was showcased, followed by a keynote talk by Professor Emeritus Grenville Hancox on the topic of ‘Singing on Prescription’. Practitioners and researchers attending Spheres of Singing recognised the need to establish a network that could continue the many conversations raised at the conference, and could also unite practitioners, researchers and health professionals who are doing work in a variety of areas but are not necessarily aware of how their work interlinks. There are several organisations and charities providing Singing for Health services across Scotland, as well as many practitioners facilitating groups without organisational support; however, to date, there is no resource that shows the number of Singing for Health support services in Scotland.
Research in singing for health has demonstrated that singing can help people to live well with their chronic illness, such as by giving them the tools to ‘self-manage’ their symptoms. For example, singing teaches deep-breathing practices, which can help to prevent breathlessness for individuals living with respiratory illness; it can help strengthen vocal muscles of individuals living with Parkinson’s disease, and it can aid the memory of those living with dementia. These health management techniques can help to empower people to have better control over their illnesses. Singing groups also provide a safe and supportive space to be around people who have similar lived experiences of illness. As a result, peer support is an important feature of singing for health communities. By giving people the tools to manage their health difficulties, singing for health practices exemplify the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland’s aim that by 2025 all health practitioners will be practising person-centred ‘realistic medicine’.
Scotland’s Singing for Health Network will provide a space for a diverse community of singing practitioners and researchers, who specifically work on singing and health, to come together to share knowledge, ideas, and practice and to open avenues for communication between individuals and organisations. The network also hopes to provide a space to discuss larger issues about how to engage and work alongside medical professionals, to offer Singing for Health as a legitimate form of music therapy proven by research to help with a wide range of medical conditions.
The team are recording a podcast series, where singing group leaders, researchers and medical practitioners discuss specific health conditions and how singing can help patients to manage their condition. The first series of the podcast will launch in January 2022. The network is also mapping all the Singing for Health groups in Scotland with the aim of providing an open-access resource that makes it easier to identify local groups. If you would like to know more about Scotland’s Singing for Health Network activities, please see our website: rcs.ac.uk/research/staffresearch/scotlands-singing-for-health-network or follow us on Twitter @ScotSingHealth. See our next feature on the Mercury Prize for more success stories in music from over the last year
