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The University of Oxford is a leading centre for research in opera and music theatre, where the work of musicologists and practitioners intersects to mutual benefit, and outputs have attracted the wide attention of new audiences well beyond the academic community. Oxford Opera encompasses a broad historical range, but shares a set of common aims and objectives: exploring new and historical modes of performance and realisation; challenging received operatic conventions and performance traditions in a scholarly and creative manner; and disseminating research results to new listeners through professional collaborations. Young people, the general public, and other professional practitioners have all been beneficiaries.
The Pantomime in Scotland touring exhibition attracted audiences of 63,000 people between 2008 and 2010. It was supported by a national programme of community events for schools and the general public, gathering memories from older visitors to form part of an ongoing cultural archive. The discovery and re-recording of film and music from the 1930s-50s led to two concerts attended by 700 people in 2010, and the creation of a DVD, which has sold 500 copies since its production in 2009. Publicity surrounding the exhibition and related events reached an estimated circulation of 467,330 across print media and audiences of over 1 million across Scottish radio and television.
The Enchanted Palace was a collaborative project between theatre company WildWorks and Historic Royal Palaces (HRP). It transformed the State Apartments at Kensington Palace into an interactive exhibition (26 March 2010 — 1 June 2012) which brought the stories and the palace to life.
The Enchanted Palace enabled Kensington Palace to remain open during a two-year £12 million refurbishment. The project brought in income, safeguarded jobs and drew in new audiences. Thirteen community groups, schools and colleges were involved in its creation while 10 high-profile designers were invited to create work in response to the stories of the palace. The Enchanted Palace increased the numbers of Palace visitors (even during this refurbishment period) and was widely covered in the press featuring on the International Council of Museums website www.clothestellstories.com as an example of good practice.
The opera Knight Crew by Julian Philips provides a model for how contemporary large-scale opera can excite young people for whom the medium is often perceived as excluding and exclusive.
Knight Crew's impacts were both direct and indirect: direct through the involvement of young people with little or no experience of opera in the development and performance of the work; indirect through the international influence the various studies and evaluations of the opera have had on subsequent initiatives within opera and education.
This case study traces the impact on cross-cultural links between Scotland and Japan of The Pure Land, a historical novel by Alan Spence based on the life of Thomas Glover, a merchant from Aberdeen who emigrated to Japan in the mid-19th century. Glover was an influential figure in the development of modern industrial Japan, and was instrumental in the founding of Mitsubishi. A revered figure in Japan, he was less well known in his own country. Publication of The Pure Land in 2006 transformed this, generating global interest in Glover and highlighting previously unrecognised affinities between Eastern (particularly Japanese) and Western (particularly Scottish) cultures. As well as inspiring a new biography, newspaper articles and radio programmes, and various educational initiatives, Spence's novel has enhanced cultural ties between Scotland and Japan, and extended public understanding of the history of globalisation. Other works by Spence on Scottish-Japanese themes have extended this influence.
James Hogg (1770-1835) is an important but hitherto little known nineteenth-century Scottish author and songwriter. In recent years, Stirling research has demonstrably expanded the audience for Hogg's songs and poetry in Scotland, the wider UK, and USA. Contemporary writers and artists have become more engaged with Hogg's work, and among the public this research has generated greater appreciation of the Scottish literary and music tradition in particular, while promoting Scottish cultural heritage in general, at home, and around the world.
`Anya 17 is not just an opera. It's a campaign' (cast member's blog, http://tinyurl.com/ne64uqt).
Anya 17 (an opera about human trafficking), first performed in March 2012, generated wide media and civil society attention. 13 UK and international anti-trafficking campaigning groups have endorsed the opera and used it to raise awareness and help leverage their agenda to change legislation. Third sector and media attention has taken the research to a wider community than just the original audience, winning recognition and enabling follow-through of various kinds. Collaboration, publicity and support from NGOs has enabled Anya17 to further its reach internationally, with performances in Romania, Germany, the UK and the USA in the near future creating opportunities for developing further impacts on opera audiences, campaigning organisations, wider civil society and government in Europe and America.
This case study details the impact of collaboration between three colleagues at the University of Aberdeen - Mealor, Stollery (Music) and Davidson (History of Art) and how the resulting work has contributed to a reassessment of opera in the twenty-first century in the context of the work of Scottish composers such as Thea Musgrave, Peter Maxwell Davies, Judith Weir and Sally Beamish. In 2010 the team created the opera 74 Degrees North, commissioned by Scottish Opera for its FIVE:15 series of new operas.
The impact of the work can be evidenced in the following ways:
a) Securing of excellent reviews in national press;
b) Near capacity audiences over eleven performances at three national venues;
c) Plans with Scottish Opera to create a new longer version of the work for future performance nationally and internationally;
d) Further collaboration between composers in Music department to create new work with the capacity to achieve impact;
e) sound festival 2012's commitment to a weekend of new approaches to opera composition;
f) Development of a substantive and continuing relationship between Scottish Opera and University of Aberdeen.
Dr Tanja Bueltmann's research on the Scots in New Zealand has enhanced Scottish ethnic groups' understanding of their own history and heritage as a community in New Zealand. Through public talks and direct research user engagement, Bueltmann has been able to change their perceptions of the role the Scots played in the making of New Zealand society, as well as of their cultural legacies. Secondly, her research has increased awareness in Scotland, among museum curators, heritage sector stakeholders, and policymakers, of the central role of Scottish ethnic associationalism in the diaspora, directly informing, shaping and changing their practice of presenting the diaspora to the Scottish public.
Nicola McCartney's work as a practitioner of Applied Theatre has had impacts on civil society, education, and cultural life, contributing to transforming society by directly benefitting both vulnerable groups and theatre professionals internationally. Via her work with Rachel's House, a prisoner re-entry programme in Ohio, 7 women ex-offenders and 8 members of staff benefitted from McCartney's use of dramatic narrative as the basis for therapeutic interventions and to facilitate the integration of disenfranchised groups into mainstream communities. 80 Theatre professionals in Russia, and pupils and teachers from 8 Moscow schools, have also benefitted from training in McCartney's Applied Theatre methods, providing them with a new and innovative way of working with disenfranchised groups and individuals.