I teach arts management and cultural policy to students across the university, making special provision for musicians. I worked in the Arts Council’s music department for 13 years before moving to Southampton, developing national policy and spending tens of millions of pounds of public money – experience on which I continue to draw and which I am happy to share.
Two high-profile arts venues in Southampton are closely associated with the university: Turner Sims concert hall (only a few metres from our Music Department), and the John Hansard Gallery (in brand new city centre premises). Colleagues running these venues provide eye-opening lecture content for my introductory module “How the Arts Work”, and offer a one-to-one advisory service for students planning careers in the arts.
I have research interests in a number of different fields and a track record of publication in at least three: cultural policy, as you might expect, organology (musical instrument design and technology) and early English opera. I have co-edited two volumes in the Purcell Society’s complete edition of Purcell’s works (The Indian Queen, 1994; The Fairy Queen, 2009) and am most of the way through a third (King Arthur, forthcoming). I am a versatile research supervisor working with students from final-year undergraduate up to PhD on a fascinating range of projects. I encourage career-orientated research that asks and answers questions of concern to working musicians, not just to academics. I helped to set up Southampton’s MA International Music Management programme and am still a busy member the programme’s teaching team.
