Mandie Garrigan and Judith Dray discuss their experience at the SIBMAS 2024 conference in Hong Kong. Their trip was enabled by an APAC Travel Grant.
Mandie works full-time in the Library but has been able to spend one day a week working with our archival collections, cataloguing and organising them. Judith is Head of Library Services but originally trained and worked as an archivist.
We both work in the Library and Archives of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD), Cardiff. Working in a small and specialist institution, financial and staffing constraints can make travel for conferences or courses challenging and international travel almost impossible. So, when we could pull together funding to support our trip to Hong Kong to attend and present at the SIBMAS conference in June 2024, we were overjoyed!
We knew that to travel, we would have to work hard to get funding. The RWCMD Research Fund, the National Archives Skills Award, and the Association of Performing Arts Collections (APAC) funded our attendance at the Conference. We are extremely grateful to all our funders for allowing us this amazing learning experience.
Our archives and special collections are an invaluable resource for students, performers, researchers, and members of the public interested in the history of music and theatre in Wales and beyond. They include the College’s own institutional archives, archives and manuscripts of several composers (including Mervyn Burtch, Alun Hoddinott, Graham Whetham, Mansel Thomas, and David Harries), some manuscripts and archives of the Drama Association of Wales, the Glamorgan Youth Orchestra archive, and the Foyle Opera Rara Collection. The Foyle Opera Rara Collection is our biggest collection, the one that is currently most used in our teaching, and the collection that formed the basis of the panel we delivered at SIBMAS.
SIBMAS: our panel
Our panel was in collaboration with the opera company Opera Rara and explored the way both organisations use special collections. Henry Little and Roger Parker from Opera Rara could not attend the Conference, but they recorded a lecture-recital on how they use archival sources to fulfil their mission to restore, record, perform, and promote the lost operatic heritage of the 19th and early 20th centuries; this mostly focused on the reconstruction of lost Donizetti songs.
We then gave a presentation on using RWCMD special collections to enrich learning opportunities (something that we found surprisingly rare in vocational performing arts education). We talked about object-based learning: “a form of active learning that uses artworks, artefacts, archival materials […]to inspire close observation and deep critical thinking” (University of Miami (https://academictechnologies.it.miami.edu/explore-technologies/technology-summaries/object-based-learning/index.html). A growing body of research has examined the benefits of this approach but we were not able to find any research examining its potential in music or vocational performing arts training.
We started using object-based learning at RWCMD by running seminars for our undergraduate music students with the Foyle Opera Rara Collection. The seminars take the form of workshops, with the rooms arranged with tables set up as stations with different items on each and corresponding discussion prompts. The items could be, for example, comparisons of the first edition and modern edition, a letter from a composer, a comparison between the manuscript and published edition, and comparisons of how an opera score changed when published in different countries and decades. Students moved in groups around the four stations, and we all gave feedback at the end. The prompts and discussion focus on what the items can tell us about music and society at the time the items were created or used and how this is similar or different to our time now.
Following the introduction of object-based learning with interactive elements (handling original, historical objects and learning from them), many students have been fully engaged and returned for independent learning using our archives and special collections. Research supports the idea that object-based learning is particularly beneficial for undergraduate students, especially for neurodivergent students, but existing research has not examined its relevance to performing arts education. Object-based learning invokes many senses (touch, sight, smell) and can invoke surprising emotional responses, which can inspire creative interaction. The relevance of this approach is further underscored by the growing population of neurodivergent students in conservatoires, highlighting the need for inclusive teaching practices. We plan to keep experimenting with this methodology and undertaking further research. Finally, both organisations discussed their dynamic collaboration, which is based on a historical collection.
Finally, we shared thoughts on how having a shared archival resource has led to meaningful and creative collaboration between the two organisations. This can be summarised in a quote from Maestro Carlo Ritzi, a world-famous conductor with close ties to Opera Rara and RWCMD. He said, “the partnership between Opera Rara and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama is very close to my heart. As both Opera Rara’s Artistic Director and the College’s International Chair in Conducting, I can see first-hand the impact this makes on students, whether they are exploring the Foyle Opera Rara Collection in search of rare new works to perform, seeing an original manuscript of a revered composer, or preparing for their future life as a professional in the industry. With the Collection at the College, we hope this partnership will enhance the world-class education students receive and continue providing professional opportunities for alumni.”
Our experience of the Conference and exploring Hong Kong
The Conference itself was fantastic. We got to hear some brilliant speakers working on exciting projects. It was full-on with a highly packed programme, but we found time to connect and network with colleagues worldwide. It was fantastic in bringing together archivists, librarians, performing artists and researchers from around the world, cultivating an environment where we could learn from each other, connect meaningfully, and work towards finding ways that we can work together to create a world where the performing arts are documented more thoroughly.
The Conference also included some incredible excursions. The opening ceremony took place in the Tea House Theatre in the Xiqu Centre, where we were treated to performances of Cantonese opera (or xiqu) and delicious dim sum! It was our first experience of this art form, and we were both keen to learn about the performances, styles, and costumes.
We also visited the Hong Kong Public Library, where we were treated to a display of treasures from their music collection, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, where Dr Cheung Ping Kuen, one of the chairpersons of the International Association of Theatre Critics (HK), had curated a fascinating and detailed exhibition from the archive of Chung Ying Theatre Company.
Benefits of applying for funding
To finish, aside from getting to visit some extraordinary places like Hong Kong, we thought we’d share some quick bullet points about the benefits to us and why we’d recommend applying for funding:
- We saw how archives can be used for performance or even in a performance with exciting creative engagement with archives
- It gave us ideas about how we can utilise our archives within an educational setting
- We got to make meaningful connections with archivists, librarians, curators, researchers and performing artists
- Personal growth and confidence – it was the first time we had presented at a conference of that size within the context of archives and the performing arts
- Applying and successfully securing the conference grants were an excellent means of proving our work here at RWCMD and how it is important to the educational setting
- It was a chance to develop our grant writing skills for future research
Gallery
What connects our members’ collections? Here we put a spotlight on some of the curious themes that tie us together.