Briefing on the Agential Artist assessment

What is the Agential Artist assessment?

The Agential Artist assessment gives you the opportunity to work on a three-month collaborative project with students on the MFA Classical and Contemporary Text, leading to a public performance of new work at an external venue in January.

What do I have to do?

Students on the MFA Classical and Contemporary text undertake to lead and manage a 60 credit module called ‘The Agential Artist’. The module descriptor states:

‘This module expects the student to take substantial ownership of their learning. Students will develop, rehearse and perform one-hour original projects inspired by classical and/or contemporary text. These performances might represent expansion and further development of projects undertaken in the On the Verge festival or entirely new projects. Performances will occur at an off-site venue.

As a music student, you will work closely as part of a creative team drawn from the MFA programme. Your commitment would be:

Term 1 Week 1 – Encounter

From Tuesday to Friday of week 1 you will spend four full days with the MFA students and mentoring team at Wallace Studios. This time will be used to explore initial ideas, uncover ways of working, and establish the teams and projects that will go forward to develop and develop new works.

Term 1 – Twilight Sessions

The cohort of MFA and MMus students taking part in the project will meet with the mentors one evening a week to monitor progress, discuss ideas, and share work in progress. (tbc, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday 1800-2100)

Term 2 Weeks 1-3 – Rehearsal and Performance

The productions will go into full-time rehearsal in January, initially at Wallace Studios and/or Renfrew Street, moving into the external venue in weeks two and three for final rehearsal and performance. During this period you will be expected to have no other commitments, whether externally or within the School of Music.

How will I be assessed?

It is important to realise that, although you will be working together as a team, the Agential Artist project has a different status within the MMus programme to that of the MFA programme. The assessment is therefore not identical. As an MMus student, the project forms part of Principal Study 2 and is in most cases internally assessed as a 50% B column option according the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of that module. For MMus composers, work arising from the project will be incorporated as part of the Portfolio submission.

To take full advantage of the collaborative nature of the project, the final performances will be viewed by an assessment team that includes experts from both the School of Music and the School of Drama, Dance, Production and Film. You will thus have the chance to receive feedback on your work from multiple perspectives, although your final grade will be given by the assessors from the School of Music.

How will I be supported?

You will have an individual mentor from the School of Music, who will also form part of the mentoring team alongside staff from the MFA programme. You may also wish to discuss with your Head of Department whether a proportion of your Principal Study lesson time might be spent with a tutor or tutors who have particular expertise in the musical challenges of the particular project under development.

Budget

The Conservatoire will cover the hire cost of the external venue and a professional producer.

In addition, each individual MFA/MMus student will be allocated a £500 budget towards the project. These individual budgets may be aggregated, so that, for instance, a team of four people working together would have a total budget of £2000. The team are entirely responsible for how this money is spent: examples might include set, props, costumes, technical support, equipment hire, additional rehearsal time, or anything else that is needed to support the work being developed.

For MMus students, the funds to cover the individual project will be drawn from the departmental budgets for additional study: this means that the additional 20 minutes a week (9 hours total) that may be negotiated for the study of related (or, exceptionally, unrelated) study will not be available to students undertaking this assessment option.