Tag: Fair Access

Join Our Virtual Fair Access Band

Posted on by Yvonne McLellan

Virtual Fair Access Band

Are you a singer or a musician? Want to be part of our lockdown band?

If you are a pupil that goes to one of our 37 WACI schools or are part of the Transitions programme, you’re invited to join us to take part in an exciting new musical collaboration project!

Through the wonders of modern technology, musicians Becca Skeoch and Owen Sinclair are putting together a socially distanced band and creating a special video collage to be shared on the RCS social media accounts.

How to take part:

  • Sign up for the project via this online form: Registration Deadline is the 22nd of May

On the Sign-Up form you will be asked:

  • Your main instrument.
  • Your ability (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
  • If you can comfortably sight-read or follow a chord chart.
  • If you have access to a device that will allow you to record a video with audio.

What will happen next:

  • Owen and Becca (the musicians behind the project) will then decide on the piece of music that is suitable for the instrumentation for the students that have signed up to the project.
  • You will then be sent a guide track accompanied by either a score, chord chart or lyrics that is suitable for your ability level and instrument.
  • There will also be an online tutorial session that you will be invited to join in which Becca and Owen talk you through the music that you have been sent and how to record it so that your part is in time and slots in with your fellow virtual band members.
  • You will then record your part on video and send it to Owen and Becca.
  • Finally, Owen and Becca will edit the audio and video to create our Virtual Fair Access Band.

Get involved!

RCS Fair Access Plenary

Posted on by Yvonne McLellan

Poverty and Under-Representation of Working-Class People in the Arts

This week Fair Access staff, which includes the WACI team, had the opportunity to attend the Fair Access Plenary. This is an event that regularly happens within the Royal Conservatoire where issues relating to fair access and widening participation can be discussed with guest speakers.

On Tuesday 11 February the topic was poverty and under-representation of working-class people in the arts where we heard from guest speakers Fiona Evans, an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced in the UK and abroad and best known for her play Scarborough, James Price, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Springburn who taught himself how to write scripts in his teens, recently nominated for Best Short Film at the 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival for his latest film Boys Night and Laura E Waddell, a writer, publisher and speaker who believes in finding new ways to connect modern audiences with books and supporting and encouraging writers and artists from marginalised communities.

Hosted by the RCS Fair Access Manager, Jesse Paul, they shared their experiences and discussed the barriers that need addressing in order to create better support for those entering the arts from working-class backgrounds.

They spoke knowledgeably about how lack of money can have a negative impact on learning experiences, asked the audience to consider why people make assumptions about the kind of work working-class artists want to make and offered provocations about working-class identities and the role institutions need to play in welcoming working-class students in – suggesting that outreach and working-class role models were helpful ways to locate talented new artists.