My Life as a Musician: Designing a Vocational Preparation Strand to Create Industry-Prepared Musicians

Abstract

For the last two decades, the discourse surrounding the education of the professional musician has increased as traditional forms of music employment become more competitive and the portfolio career has returned as an accepted mode of working for musicians. Criticism of the nineteenth-century conservatoire model, which in turn has led to the recommendation to embed an employability focus within degree programs that fosters the development of industry-prepared musicians. To date, however, there are few successful examples of this. This study investigates the design, development and delivery of the My Life as a Musician (MLaaM) vocational preparation strand of undergraduate courses that assist student musicians to prepare for their likely employment, both before and after graduation. The thesis makes an original contribution to higher education teaching and learning by documenting the processes involved in developing employability education within an undergraduate music curriculum. Data collection involved a suite of research methods based on a grounded theoretical approach that included autoethnography, practitioner action research, focus groups of 44 Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (QCGU) students, and interviews with 12 faculty plus three Australian arts leaders, three Australian higher education leaders and three Australian music industry lecturers. Further to this, interviews with 15 South-East Queensland portfolio career musicians informed the design of a 75-question survey to which 261 Australian portfolio musicians responded. The findings revealed a shrinking and territorial music industry that has been affected by macro-environmental forces, an increased professional musician population, a lack of respect for the portfolio careerist, and cannibalistic employment practices. The musicians indicated that opportunities exist to provide formal and informal vocational preparation in the form of experiential learning for the acquisition of an extensive set of hard and soft skills that support career sustainability. However, the research revealed 11 barriers to the success of this employment education. These involved students’ romanticised career aspirations, varying degree approaches, and professional identity development from music student to student musician. In addition, the influence of a master-apprentice model largely subscribing to an art for art’s sake approach to career development, rather than acknowledging the realities of the changing profession, further affected students’ acceptance of formalised vocational learning. Combined with this qualitative and quantitative inquiry, an extensive literature review of the music industry, musician identity, career theory and educational practice has contributed to the development of a Conservatoire Student Lifecycle Model as the foundation of the MLaaM strand. Implications for the further development of these courses, ethical extracurricular programme activities, curriculum restructure and the call for industry reform are discussed. The results of this study may hold relevance for those wishing to instigate similar vocational preparation courses within undergraduate tertiary music programmes.