11 - Reimagining for the Future

Summary

Under Colin Lawson, the College has embarked upon a major fundraising strategy, ‘More Music: Reimagining the RCM’. Its underlying purpose has been to equip the RCM more completely as an international competitor for musical talent, with world-class facilities and communications, and established academic partnerships in China and the Far East. This has involved an intensive building programme to provide more performance, practice and social space within the East courtyard and to develop and rehouse the RCM’s museum within dedicated facilities. There has also been the purchase of the nearby Markova House, which has greatly expanded the College’s physical resources, and the College Hall site has been redeveloped to provide more secure and better-quality student housing. This chapter also looks at how the College’s museum strategy offering digital, as well as physical, access to its holdings has given a new centrality to its historical collections. It also discusses how the new field of cultural economics has shown that the financial support for music training is now more readily acknowledged to be a financial investment, rather than a luxury.