Four leading music schools join forces in the 'Global Conservatoire'

The Royal College of Music (London) has joined with the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), the Royal Danish Academy of Music (RDAM), and the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) to launch the Global Conservatoire, a new digital learning environment.

The partnership will bring faculty and students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, from each of the four colleges into an online classroom, allowing them to complete courses and provide access to subjects unique to each partner school.

The project draws on its partners’ extensive collaboration in distance learning prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the lessons learned from last spring’s rapid-response pivot to online learning through this academic year.

A statement issued by the leaders of the Global Conservatoire’s four partner institutions, Professor Colin Lawson, Director, RCM; James Gandre, President, MSM; Uffe Savery, President, RDAM; Ulrike Sych, Rector, MDW, said: 'We are so pleased that an idea sprung from our collective discussions in the autumn of 2019 has blossomed so fully and efficiently, and with an immediacy that reflect the times in which we find ourselves.

'Individually, each institution that comprises the Global Conservatoire (GC) educates future artists, arts administrators and educators. What the GC, an entirely new type of virtual inter-university, international environment, will do is effectively broaden each of the four partners’ curricular offerings and add a truly global dimension to their students’ learning experience.

'We are proud to launch the Global Conservatoire and to welcome our students to a new digital age of global learning.'