Environment submissions database

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Research and teaching staff alike are embedded in professions that have suffered unprecedented shocks and it is a mark of the strength of our community that it has responded so positively and pro-actively in the context of the global emergency. Ours is a close-knit community and the web of personal relationships that sustain it in normal times has proven vital. The impact of the pandemic on research has been highly differential, with some colleagues being comprehensively diverted to other duties, or having programmes of Practice Research put on indefinite pause while social distancing protocols make them impossible. Others have found that professional work beyond the institution has diminished in a way that allows them to focus more completely on research, and made good progress on long-planned projects. All research skills events for PGRs and the annual progress review arrangements have been sustained in full, online, during the pandemic, and supplemented with fortnightly ‘check-ins’ for all students and extra social events. We worked with the University of St Andrews to develop a ‘discounted time’ protocol that takes account of circumstances beyond the student’s control, and have used this to manage continued progress for doctoral students. Additional funding from the Scottish Funding Council permitted us to extend studentship support and we have also disbursed special awards totalling c.£11,000 for hardship and/or increased project costs arising from the pandemic. The accelerated ‘digital turn’ of the pandemic has allowed us to open up new networks to support our research, and new audiences for our public engagement work. Some activity has been adapted to the digital context, and new initiatives have been catalysed by the emergency. With vigorous promotion and networking, urgent projects like 'Art-making in the Anthropocene', and key parts of our offer, such as our enterprise summer school SHIFT, were re-worked in online formats. 'Art-making…' reached 202 participants from 14 countries, and the digital format allowed us to increase registrations for SHIFT from 60 to 90. For our public Exchange Talks series the online format has been transformative in helping us reach larger and more diverse audiences. The talks reached a total live audience of more than 600 in AY 20-21 with a further 4300 asynchronous views of archive videos on RCS At Home, a new digital platform that was launched in March 2020 (https://www.rcs.ac.uk/rcsathome/). RCS At Home has broadcast over 150 performances and films, and published blog posts and articles that together have received more than 800,000 views from over 50 countries. Classic FM included it among its ‘best live-streamed and archive classical concerts’ and featured the platform alongside the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Berlin Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, and the Royal Opera House. Colleagues with SRR have been active in shaping the RCS At Home offer with, for example, Bissell curating the Propel digital festival of new work from students on the Contemporary Performance Practice programme in June 2020.