Our brilliant students, staff and graduates are pulling out all the creative stops to make the most of our shared situation, and keep us connected.
There have been so many amazing and inspirational posts over these last few weeks. We’ve collated just a few to give an idea of the range out there, celebrating the College’s community and creativity.
One of the first online student concerts was from Arculo, a viol consort made up of students and graduates, who performed a live concert on the first Friday the College was closed.
We hope you enjoyed?? There are 5 happy faces here after our first, and what we hope isn’t our last livestream! @twitch @rwcmd #rwcmd #rwcmdstrings #rwcmdcreative pic.twitter.com/C4eI3GbOj0
— Arculo (@Arculo1) March 20, 2020
Making sure that our week still ends in the same way – our legendary weekly Friday Amser Jazz Time continues. Of course, it’s now gone online, thanks to our Lecturer in Music and Recording Studios Manager, Odilon Marcenaro, creating the College’s new radio station, Atmospheres Radio, from his desk at home in time for last week’s session.
Tonight, #AmserJazzTime comes to you via our experimental online radio station – follow this link and listen to new content created by RWCMD jazz students and staff from 5.30pm. Let us know how you found using it!https://t.co/iFwLvpN3gw pic.twitter.com/IO82wiJDIb
— AmserJazzTime (@AmserJazzTime) March 27, 2020
Amser Jazz Time will be back on 1 May, after the Easter holidays, as part of our annual Atmospheres new music festival. More details to follow, but meanwhile you can listen to Atmospheres Radio here.
Musical Theatre grads Glain Rhys and Thomas McFarlane came (safely) together to reprise their beautiful duet, Someday, from our recent production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Graduate actor Annes Elwy, recently seen terrifying us all in BBC’s Hidden/Craith, was inspired by an idea from Samuel West to read a poem a day:
Can I steal this? THANK YOU for all the lovely comments/tweets/DMs from #hidden #craith. I love acting, but there won’t be any scripts to learn for a while. So, if anyone has a poem (Welsh or English) they’d like me to read – I’ll make it my daily exercise to record. https://t.co/C76f1wX7Ov
— Annes Elwy (@annesel) March 18, 2020
and jazz student Elijah Jeffery shared this recording, as a tribute to the start of the holidays and his time at College.
Our Brass Band in Residence, The Cory Band’s post speaks for itself – as they cheered up the nation and had us all singing along:
Over 650k online views, seen by millions on BBC, ITV, plus tonight we’re on @s4c at approx 7:50pm. And guess what! Our next distance banding video is already taking shape. Ooooh, what will it be . @BB1887 @4barsrest @BBWMagazine @BBCBreakfast @BBCWalesNews @WalesOnline pic.twitter.com/kx7IzbwRCi
— The Cory Band (@Coryband) March 25, 2020
Not to be outdone, our Head of Percussion, Patrick King got as many young performers as possible to grab whatever they could find and make some noise together with Nicola Benedetti’s Foundation live samba session:
Join Patrick King, Head of Percussion, at midday over on @NickyBenedetti‘s Foundation Instagram account for a fun, live samba session!#RWCMDPercussion #RWCMDMusic#RWCMDCreative#KeepCreative https://t.co/GxAAhE5cGx
— Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (@RWCMD) April 1, 2020
Musical Theatre graduate Kate McKeown wanted do something positive with her newly found ‘spare time,’ and has set up Quarantine FM, focusing on keeping us entertained in isolation.
Her new project has just been featured by The Stage, and she’s already welcomed our Head of Musical Theatre Vivien Care, and graduates Luke MCall, Emma Warren and David Harrington to her virtual studio.
Follow @FMQuarantine for more RWCMD special guests!
I can’t wait to have @VivCare from @RoyalWelshMAMTs, @MatthewChaseuk from “Out at Sea” and Jay Woodard from @FightCon_ on The Passion Project tonight at 7-8:30PM on @FmQuarantine! pic.twitter.com/LEfnIoM5Pn
— Kate McKeown (@KateMcKeown01) March 24, 2020
Actor and writer Grace Quigley’s new online theatre company, Petronilla Theatre, encourages connection and creativity at this time when so many people are feeling alone:
Hello! We are VERY excited to announce our first (zoom) play reading which will be on Tuesday 31st March at 6PM, hopefully a nice end to a pretty crazy month. We will be reading “If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You” by John O’Donovan!! pic.twitter.com/lv6VW2flWS
— Petronilla Theatre (@PetronillaMidia) March 28, 2020
We’ll be talking to Grace, who graduated last year, about her new project in a blog post very soon, but in the meantime you can follow @PetronillaMidia to find out when the regular play readings take place.
Our hugely talented Linbury design prize winners’ work had been on display at the National Theatre. Like so many other creative projects it had to close early, but Set and Costume designer, 2019 Linbury finalist, and Design for Performance grad Aline Jeffrey has been sharing the work online instead.
Featuring no less than 6 #RWCMDDesign grads! @amjdesigning @harrypizzey @RoseRevitt Elin Steele, Debbie Duru and TK Hay https://t.co/v0nfUkAaBn
— Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (@RWCMD) March 26, 2020
Teaching has inevitably taken on a new format, but our students and staff have stepped up to the challenge.
Many creative solutions are being found – although sometimes the students seem to be having a bit too much fun –
Step forward, Arts Managment MA’s!
Presenting the @RWCMD MA Arts Management cohort in LEGO! Credit all goes to Charlotte for recreating us all (partially enjoy the finance lecture scenario) and attention to detail, I clearly enjoy drinking too much tea in lectures! #LivingInLockdown pic.twitter.com/B8pZ4R1ZK1
— Daisy Cooksley (@daisymcooksley) March 30, 2020
Here’s our Head of Guitar, Helen Sanderson, finding solutions and creating music along the way.
An all-singing, all-dancing on-line Zoom version of @RWCMD Guitar Dept BMus3 contexts lesson. We had screen shares. We had Spotify playing. We had fab discussions and team-input problem solving for arrangements. pic.twitter.com/YZkBrYdOF3
— Helen Sanderson (@guitarina) March 24, 2020
and trombone lessons take on a new format.
@RWCMD trombone warm ups this morning @WNOtweet pic.twitter.com/fkFcZRPvtU
— roger cutts (@rogercutts) March 27, 2020
It’s great to hear such positive comments from our students, following a call out from The Stage to find out how they were all doing:
@RoyalWelshMAMTs are doing a great job keeping us in the loop with all of the plans for the rest of our course when this is all over and what to do in the meantime! Regular group calls and emails too to make sure all of the cohort are doing okay! @RWCMD #mamt20 #fearless
— Gregory George (@gregorygeorgeuk) March 26, 2020
And of course our own library is keeping us all going with their College Culture Cwtch chat:
This week we’re launching our #CollegeCultureCwtch online chat!
To join in, go watch ‘Into the Woods’ by Stephen Sondheim on Digital Theatre Plus >>https://t.co/a2n6Q2l1js & then come here for a discussion about it on Friday 27 March 5:30-6:30pm!#RWCMDCreative #KeepCreative pic.twitter.com/LXf7UayIMe
— RWCMD Library (@RWCMDLibrary) March 24, 2020
The cwtching has continued with a live tweet-along of National Theatre Live’s One Man Two Guv’nors, and next week will feature Cosi Fan Tutte, which should have been performed at the College at the end of term.
That’s a wrap for tonight folks! A huge thank you to everyone who joined!
Next week we’ll be watching Cosi fan tutti (because it’s what #RWCMDOpera would have been performing this week and their rehearsals sounded truly amazing).
More details to follow! #CollegeCultureCwtch pic.twitter.com/jS3e8b13iV
— RWCMD Library (@RWCMDLibrary) March 27, 2020
We’ll be keeping an eye out across all the social media channels and sharing more next time.
Thank you to all our creative students, staff, friends and graduates – keeping us inspired from your isolation creation stations!
We appreciate all your hard work and inspiration – it’s helping to keep us all going.
Look out for the hashtags, #RWCMDCreative and #KeepCreative
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