Wider Influence - Trinity Laban

As London’s Creative Conservatoire Trinity Laban is an internationally celebrated centre of artistic excellence.

Our influential research, innovative practice, and inspiring engagement work put us at the heart of the local community and at the forefront of the global performing arts industry.

Read on to find out more about recent projects that have had an impact beyond Trinity Laban.

International Collaborators

Trinity Laban is a leader in creative performance learning and teaching. Over the years we have built strong creative partnerships with institutions around the world, such as University of Southern California, National Taiwan University of the Arts and Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam. Trinity Laban is also the only UK conservatoire to offer a Fulbright Scholarship: the Fulbright-Trinity Laban Award in Music & Dance, which gives US citizens the chance to pursue postgraduate study at Trinity Laban.

Partnerships

CoLab Journeys

In January 2019, Head of CoLab Joe Townsend and Director of Dance Sara Matthews travelled to Hong Kong for British Council’s festival SPARK: The Science and Art of Creativity. Working at the cross-over of art and science, the Trinity Laban mentors collaborated with dance and music students from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (HK APA) to create CoLab Journeys, a 17-minute semi-improvised, immersive performance that combined original movement and sound.

CoLab Journeys forms part of a wider initiative that sees Trinity Laban working with international creative partners to develop cross-arts collaboration and to further explore artistic practice.

Colab

The Fulbright Commission

“Collaborating with amazing Trinity Laban artists who hail from all over the world is a dream come true."

Roman Baca, Trinity Laban’s Fulbright Scholar 2017-2019

In June 2018 Trinity Laban Music and Dance students presented a specially commissioned performance work at American’s New London Embassy as part of US-UK Fulbright Commission’s 70th Anniversary celebrations.

Devised by Dean of Dance Sara Matthews, Co-Lab Director Joe Townsend, and Trinity Laban Fulbright Scholar Roman Baca, the immersive and interactive work Journeys reflected cross-cultural collaboration and was premiered at the reception hosted by US ambassador to UK Robert Wood Johnson.

Fulbright Scholarship

Venus Blazing

Venus Blazing is Trinity Laban’s unprecedented year-long celebration of female composers aimed at redressing the gender balance in music. Throughout the 2018/19 academic year we have ensured that at least half of the music programmed at our landmark Greenwich campus and in venues across London is by women so students and audiences can experience these works. This has included over 50+ classical and jazz concerts, two opera performances, and a BBC Radio 3 broadcast.

“ We believe it is our duty to celebrate women’s music and to provide the structures, support and encouragement to ensure that this is a lasting legacy for all future musicians and music lovers.”

Dr Sophie Fuller

Learning and Participation

Our Learning and Participation programmes in music and dance work with around 40,000 people of all ages each year. From classes at our venues, to work in schools alongside teachers, our projects take place in a variety of settings. We aim to be a resource for local people and partners while driving the development of new opportunities to experience music and dance.

Take Part

Inspired Not Tired

Since 2012 we have run Inspired not Tired, a longstanding programme of music and dance with older people aged 60-96 which has taken us into care homes and community centres. A core group of longstanding participants now go and present their music to other groups and encourage the involvement of the wider community.

We also engage with some of London’s most socially excluded communities, forming partnerships with community groups and regeneration agencies. In 2017 students and staff worked with local prison HMP Thameside as part of CoLab, our annual two-week festival of collaboration.

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Music and dance for health

Our work also crosses into the health sector, partnering with Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust and arts and health organisation Pulse Arts to deliver engagement programmes in hospitals, and offer professional development training, for example for vocal leaders wanting to work in singing and lung health. We also provide regular dance classes for those with an acquired brain injury.

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Tate Exchange

Our residencies at Tate Modern, including Creative Intensive, UNIQLO Tate Lates and interactive workshops, see music and dance students collaborate with members of the public in the inspiring spaces of the Blavatnik building.

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Leaders in Dance Science and Research

As the first institution in the world to offer an MSc in Dance Science (introduced in 2001) and an MFA in Dance Science (introduced in 2016), Trinity Laban explores the science behind the art and is recognised as an international leader in the fast-growing area of research.

Our department is headed by Professor Emma Redding, former president and current member of the International Association for Dance Medicine Science (IAMDS) Board of Directors, who was awarded the IADMS Dance Educator Award in 2017. Dance Science staff and students frequently present research at conferences, and Trinity Laban hosted the annual IADMS conference in 2003.

Dance Science

Alumni Profile: Simone Sistarelli

BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance Alum Simone Sistarelli (2014), is making a difference in his community with Popping For Parkinson’s, the only project in the world that delivers free popping dance classes for people with the disease.

Popping, a form of hip-hop dance that originated in 1970s California, is a based on the contraction and release of the muscles in time to music. Simone had the idea of having people with Parkinson’s take classes to help regain control of their symptoms of involuntary muscle movement.

Popping For Parkinson’s

Simone Sistarelli leading a class with four other people