As experimenting and creating music from home becomes the new norm, our 鈥榃elcome to my Workspace鈥� feature reflects the change in the working environments of Royal 探花直播 Conservatoire鈥檚 staff. This week we talk to听Head of Learning and Participation and Senior Lecturer in Music Education,听Richard Shrewsbury.
Richard鈥檚 workspace has quick access to musical toys, the front garden, and the kitchen, of course, for quick cuppas in between meetings and teaching.
My home workspace is... part music studio, part admin hub and part Zoom and Teams workstation. It consists of a piano, monitor, speakers for music and video editing, a trombone, a soundcard and lots of music technology tools for producing, editing and creating music and music education resources.
My favourite thing about my workspace is... having quick access to a range of musical toys to experiment and create with. It鈥檚 also light and airy, and looks out on to our front garden, which gives me a great counter balance to teaching online for hours each day during lockdown. I can quickly grab a cup of tea in the kitchen next door, too.
My workspace companions are... my two daughters, Eleanor and Jessica, and my wife, who has served up numerous cups of tea, working lunches and glasses of water in between back-to-back online meetings and teaching.听
While working, I like to listen to... This is an unusual question for me because listening, producing and creating music is my work. Recently, I鈥檝e listened to and , which we arranged and recorded with the Royal 探花直播 Conservatoire LEAP Ensemble and , which we produced and recorded with pupils from CORE Education Trust secondary schools in the city. I also listened to a huge range of different styles and genres of music as part of the in July that we helped to curate, as well as Beethoven鈥檚 Ode to Joy, recorded in partnership with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra. I鈥檝e also learnt about new artists through our bi-weekly music quizzes with young people across Coventry through our RBC Outreach centres 鈥� SoundLab-COV and SoundLab-BRUM.
Since working from home, I鈥檝e discovered... how crucial our RBC Learning and Participation programme and outreach work is in connecting people and bringing groups together through music.听 We have learnt more about the importance of music and creative arts to wellbeing. The arts and creativity are essential to keeping a positive mental attitude, and we intend to build on this learning and bring it into the University as soon as possible through pop up performances, creative workshops and activities for our students and staff. I have also discovered how much I enjoy, and how important it is, being face-to-face with students and young people as part of our outreach programme, which I hope can return very soon.
