University News Last updated 12 February
Friends,
Welcome to RBC This Week. As we pass the midpoint of the 2025/26 academic year, our students and staff are as busy as at any time since September, and our buildings are also buzzing with rehearsals and performances as well as the regular teaching.
My own ears are still ringing from the thrilling sounds of last Friday’s sold-out concert by the RBC Symphony Orchestra, which concluded with Shostakovich’s epic Symphony No.5 conducted by the outstanding young conductor Tess Jackson. The concert’s first half of film music reached its climax in a superb performance of Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto played by multi-talented fourth-year Piano student Alex Wyatt.
There have also been good audiences for all three final project performances so far, including this week’s (w/c 9 February) hugely entertaining Menotti opera, The Old Maid and the Thief, brilliantly put together by fourth-year Vocal student Phoebe Curcher. Next month, I am looking forward to three productions by our third-year Acting students, for which we are taking over the Crescent and Old Rep Theatres in Birmingham city centre.
At the same time as all our exciting public-facing activities, there is a lot going on within RBC – and the wider University – to help make our courses as future-proof as possible. We are aware that we are surrounded by so much rapid change – in the industries that our students will want to work in, as well as in the wider economy and society – that we have to be as agile as possible in updating our training, and also in the kinds of external partnerships that we wish to maintain.
The goals are simple: We want our students to be drawn from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible to have the best possible student experience – with a wide range of personalised opportunities – and then to succeed in wherever their talent and passion take them next.
The challenges we are all facing – low growth, ageing populations, climate change, the rapid rise of AI, to name but a few, will radically alter the nature of employment over the next decade or two, and we want our students to graduate with a range of skills that will equip them to thrive after they complete their studies. It’s not easy but it is essential that we all get this right!
In the meantime, it’s been positive to see large audiences here at RBC’s events – and this weekend’s impressive Eastside Jazz Festival will be another opportunity to welcome plenty of new audiences through our doors – see you there, I hope!
Stephen Maddock
Principal