Pressure mounts on RWCMD over plans to axe junior programmes

Celebrities and prominent figures across the creative industries have signed an open letter calling on the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama to reconsider plans to close its junior conservatoire.

Under the current proposals, the College is set to cease its weekly Young RWCMD activity from September, affecting over 300 students and 118 staff across music and drama.

Explaining its decision, a statement from the RWCMD said: ‘Alongside the entire UK High Education Sector, the College is facing significant financial challenges … Our Young Acting and Young Music work needs a considerable subsidy from the College as we receive no direct funding for pre-College education from the Higher Education Funding Council Wales (now Commission for Tertiary Education and Research) or the Welsh Government. Continuing to subsidise Young RWCMD in this way isn’t sustainable given the serious financial pressures on us.’

The open letter, signed by the impressionist Alistair McGowen, conductor Mark Wigglesworth and Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman, among others, urges the conservatoire  to ‘continue Young RWCMD for the next year academic year while alternative models and/or funding sources can be found’.

It also asks the College to ‘engage in meaningful collective consultation’ with staff affected as part of this process and with representative bodies, including the Musicians’ Union.

Meanwhile, Vaughan Gething, the First Minister of Wales, called on the RWCMD to ‘think again’ about the proposals and ‘the impact of the choices it could make’.

Responding to a question from Senedd Member Julie Morgan at last week’s First Minister’s Questions, Gething said: ‘We're not in a position to direct them [the RWCMD] on funding  - it's a choice they've made - but the Cabinet Secretary for Education has offered to meet the principal and has asked to do so.

‘I expect the principal to directly engage with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, to have a conversation with us about what it is possible to do, because I want to see our cultural assets protected and taken forwards.’

Naomi Pohl, general secretary of the Musicians’ Union, said the MU is now engaging with the RWCMD ‘after the college took the disappointing and frustrating decision to exclude us from the initial consultation meetings’.

Pohl added: ‘If this closure goes ahead, then RWCMD will be the only conservatoire in Britain without a junior department, with no other equivalent provision in Wales at a time when progress is being made on rebuilding music education through the National Music Service Wales.’

Over 10,000 people have also signed an online petition calling for Young RWCMD to be protected, which means it will now be considered for a debate in the Senedd.