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#RWCMDCreative: Keeping Connected Through Creativity

5 April 2020

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.

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.

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.

Glain, Thomas and Joel Edwards as the Hunchback in our recent production.

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:

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:

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:

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!

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:

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.

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!

Here’s our Head of Guitar, Helen Sanderson, finding solutions and creating music along the way.

and trombone lessons take on a new format.

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:

And of course our own library is keeping us all going with their College Culture Cwtch chat:

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.

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