Just in: Goldsmiths sacks 11 music teachers
NewsThe London college is the latest to announce redundancies in a move which, it is said, ‘threaten(s) the future of Goldsmiths’ entire Music Department.’
A student petition announces:
On the 1st of July, the Transformation Programme and SMT made 97 FTE redundancies, including 11 teaching staff from our department. This includes lecturers, professors and instrumental tutors from all branches of the Music Department, with specialisms in electronic music, sound art, jazz, composition, popular music and musicology. These redundancies will reduce the diversity and richness of the Department, and will significantly reduce the specialist courses that Music at Goldsmiths can offer. Importantly, these redundancies will limit the department’s ability to produce groundbreaking work in the field of music…
More here.
The abolition of electronic music, sound art, jazz, popular music, and musicology should be a cause for rejoicing on this site, especially if it reduces diversity. Shame about composition, though.
If it means they are going to concentrate on classical music, works for me. Agree re composition, though I suspect students of that can be served elsewhere.
I do not share the glee of GuestX at the reduction of diversity. That smells racist. But I share it to the extent that attempts to make the music world more diverse have meant allocating thinning resources to teaching material that has no place in a serious music department.
The Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Switzerland is a very serious music university, one of the best in Europe, and they offer degrees in pop music too. So I don’t know what your point is when referring to a “serious music department”.
The huge number of downvotes on my comment gave me hope that the majority of SD commenters are less rigidly traditional and anti-woke than I thought. But then “no place in a serious music department”. Really?
Making someone redundant is not the same as sacking.
The difference that that difference makes to the life of the person on the receiving end may be negligible.
Actually, it could make a substantial difference to the future prospects of “the person on the receiving end”. Here in the UK, many job-application forms ask the applicant to specify a “reason for leaving” previous employments (and some will also ask the more general question “Have you ever been sacked from or asked to leave a previous job?” or similar), and, unless the prospective employer is looking for a troublemaker, “redundancy” is usually far less problematic than “sacked”…
Has the same result – a human being is out of a job and has lost their employment
Made redundant not sacked…
Redundancy carries a mandatory ‘redundancy payment’; sacking does not.
Musical diversity should be celebrated, no matter what genre of music one prefers. I did my PhD at Goldsmiths Music Department and benefited enormously not only from its excellence in research, but also from the very fact that there was so much going on. It fueled thought and learning and helped me to grow and develop as both a musician and scholar. Thank you, Goldsmiths.
History is replete with people giving themselves the authority to declare what is and isn’t art. I believe some called stuff they didn’t like “Entartete Kunst”.
As a schoolboy I was awarded a bursary by the SPNM in around 1970 to study electronic music with the Late George Newson at Goldmiths. We helped develop the VCS3 and it was an enormously enriching experience. Those in the post who decry anything not ‘classical’ really need to wise up – the work that Goldsmiths has done over many years across many genres is important, not indulgent. Getting rid of so much in their curriculum and so many teachers simply reinforces the feeling that the enemy has broken through the gates in higher eduction, as it has in cultural life in general.
Goldsmiths is not the institution it once was on many fronts, not just music. That’s 90+ individuals who might now be forced into the cold, hard world of job hunting. Good luck to them – the competition can be fierce.
Who needs “groundbreaking” work? I wonder what the unemployment office can do for these dismissed people.
All very sad but the audience for (a) jazz and (b) electronic music seems to have rapidly declined since the heady days of Miles and Karlheinz in the 196Os.
You are somewhat uninformed, as both jazz and electronic music are thriving at other UK music colleges and universities, with graduates finding good employment afterwards. By implication, therefore, there is an audience.
Didn’t they have any harassments to conveniently commit?