12/08/2010

Wander through the listed Foyle Arts Building at Derry’s Magee Campus at the University of Ulster and you’ll soon pick up the creative buzz. You’ll see students dancing, rehearsing plays or creating cutting-edge design, while from other rooms comes the sound of singing, jazz, classical and rock music. With so many disciplines under one roof, not to mention such innovative teaching using the latest digital technology, the School of Creative Arts is unique in Ireland.

The School also adds immeasurably to the cultural life of Derry, equipping a new generation with the skills to make careers in the creative arts and working in partnership with the city’s many cultural centres and arts organisations. Harnessing the latest in technology, 600 highly talented and motivated students are pursuing degrees in drama, design, music, dance and creative technology here.

Digital technology

The Head of the school is Professor Paul Moore. Paul had set up and run Northern Ireland’s first media course at Omagh, before moving to the University of Ulster in 1999. His links with the industry convinced him that a different kind of learning opportunity was necessary, one where the rapid advancements in digital technology would be given far more credence in the teaching of creative arts.

Vision

Paul took his ideas to the senior management of the University of Ulster, and was given the opportunity to develop them on the Magee campus. Though involved in the early discussions which resulted in the setting up the School at Magee, Paul wasn’t actually transferred from Coleraine until 2005, taking over as Head of School from Professor Desmond Hunter in 2007. The Creative Technology degree was added the next year.

Cross-pollination

Practise-based, the five degrees run across each other, so there is a vibrant sense of cross-pollination around the building, with students from different disciplines constantly interacting and supporting each other’s projects. Each degree itself offers a wide range of study. And there are not many places where you can join a school of rock!

School of Rock

“If you take music, for instance,” Paul says, “you’ll study the core of the subject, the theory of music, and you’ll specialise by instrument, whether it’s voice, harp or guitar. But you can also take a strand such as classical, traditional, rock school, or electronic music or indeed combine them and come out with a mixed degree”.

Apple training centre

With the latest digital technology at the heart of each degree – the school is an accredited Apple training centre – students in all disciplines learn to master the latest software. Even the dancers have access to digital capture to make virtual copies of themselves, for instance.

Entrepreneurial skills

But there is also a strong practical ethos to the degrees. “All students do entrepreneurship and arts management around their chosen subject”, Paul says. “I always tell them, you’ll never have a job for life in the arts, your work will be project based. So when you’re not performing you’ve got to be able to work in a ticket office, or whatever, to keep going”.

Making their way

“This is such a vibrant, edgy place, every floor literally rocks whether it’s dance, drama or music, but these are not creative aesthetes. It’s vocational. We can’t just produce brilliant musicians or dramatists who won’t make their way in the world. This is a hardnosed industry. Our students are taught how to make a pitch and all the other skills they will need to survive in their careers. Some students actually end up in arts management or the entrepreneurial side or mix them with their creative careers”.

Holistic education

Students are also taught every aspect of the field they pursue. Drama students, for instance, learn lighting, sound and stage management. Musicians learn how to record in a studio, understand acoustics and work PA systems. When they go out to perform in Derry, as they frequently do, these skills come in handy.

Performing in the city

“Every weekend large numbers of our students are performing around the city”, Paul says. “Even though I suspect few people realise they are from here, they’re having a huge, if invisible, impact on the city. They will organise everything themselves too. Music students, for instance, will have to book the venue, arrange advertising, produce programmes and do the sound and lighting. Our third year drama students wrote The Little Box of Wonders recently and worked with local schools to produce it. In May they took it to Belfast for three nights at the Belfast Children’s Theatre Festival”.

Vibrant partnerships

Over the years the School of Creative Arts has developed strong working relationships with all Derry’s vibrant cultural and arts centres (it works both ways as tutors from the Nerve Centre are taking the School’s Creative Technology degree). Derry’s renowned Void Gallery hosts exhibition space for their design students, who are encouraged to create the kind of cutting-edge work the gallery excels in. This September, for instance, it is hoped a stunning multi-media work from a second year student will be shown on large screens in one of the Void’s exhibition rooms.

Under one roof

“In an Irish context, what we do here is unique”, Paul says. “Normally you’d have music in a conservatoire, drama in its own building and design and technology somewhere else. Here you have everything under one roof”.

360Production

It’s that fertile mixture that first attracted John Farren to set up the groundbreaking digital broadcasting company 360Production in Derry. “I was very impressed with what I saw in terms of computer design, graphic design and traditional art,” he says. ”They’ve established this embryonic pool of talent here and identified that a positive osmosis can happen when you run different disciplines which have traditionally been kept apart. Not all that many academic centres recognise that convergence, so full credit to them”.

Doubling numbers

So successful has the school proved that numbers of applicants doubled last year and are going to be even higher this year. One of Paul’s hopes for the future, though he believes it unlikely in the short term, is for a state-of-the-art new building to replace the one they have now outgrown. He would also love to see the School become acknowledged as the Dartington College of Arts of Northern Ireland, “with a reputation for avant-garde and experimental work of great quality as well as a centre of work for the creative industries”.

Creative advertising

Back in May Paul was delighted to see another innovative degree validated in time for September 2011. “We’re really excited about the new creative advertising degree”, he says. “It’s a cross campus initiative with the International School of Business here and will be more about viral marketing than be agency based. Why should business not be about creativity? I believe we need to decouple the notion of creativity from the arts. It should apply to all disciplines”.

City of Culture

“If we produce a City of Culture with a capital C for culture simply with big events that people go along to see then I think we have lost a huge opportunity. To me culture is an everyday lived experience. How do we manifest lived experience? It’s that old idea of people singing around a piano on a Friday night and we should be getting the necessary exposure for our lived culture and bringing out the natural life of our city. We have astounding artistic work at places like Shantallow Community Centre, which the City of Culture could bring out. We have great cultural figures here, like the best punk band of all time, The Undertones, great writers, musicians and actors who have never lost their connection with the community. If we can keep that connection within the City of Culture it will be very special indeed”.

« Back to Voices