jpme 3 (2) pp.

293–308 Intellect Limited 2019

Journal of Popular Music Education

Volume 3 Number 2
© 2019 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jpme.3.2.293_1

CATHERINE STRONG, SHELLEY BRUNT, FABIAN CANNIZZO,

ED MONTANO, IAN ROGERS AND GENE SHILL
RMIT University

Adapting the studio model

for the Australian popular
music education context

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Australian university graduates of music industry degrees are often faced with studio model
challenges stemming from both Australia’s peripheral position in global music music industry
economies and the predominance of precarious work environments. This article education
presents an evaluation of a  ‘studio model’ of education adopted by the Bachelor portfolio career
of Arts (Music Industry) degree at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. event management
The studio model approach aims to better prepare graduates for careers in the entrepreneurship
contemporary music industry via hands-on and tacit learning experiences that undergraduates
ready them for ‘portfolio careers’. The case study evaluated here involved students
working with an industry partner to deliver an on-campus music festival called
Copresents in 2017. Student feedback indicated overall satisfaction with the
studio, and that they were able to develop certain skills that would be valuable to
them in a portfolio career, such as improved communication competencies and a
better understanding of possible careers in the industry. We also demonstrate that
students recognized ways in which the experience was curtailed by institutional
and industrial requirements that ran counter to the ideals of studio learning. We
note that the effectiveness of the model is limited in some ways by its placement at
the intersection of the institutional needs of the university and the requirements of
industry, neither of which are entirely in alignment with student needs.

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Catherine Strong | Shelley Brunt | Fabian Cannizzo | Ed Montano | Ian Rogers | Gene Shill

Introduction
The Australian popular music industry is a creative sector that presents signif-
icant challenges for aspiring musicians. Traditionally viewed as an export
market by the global industries and often still proffering sounds that are
modified from ‘already internationally established music style(s)’ (Turner 1992:
13), music-making as a career is risky. The supporting music industries – a
vast network of ancillary workers – present more viable careers, especially in
Australia’s capital cities of music employment such as Melbourne, Sydney and
Brisbane. The distance between these cities, coupled with the low-density
distribution of the Australian population and the country’s distance from
the flows of music-related capital found in the United States and the United
Kingdom, place Australian music workers in a precarious position. The domes-
tic market is subject to various market failures, a situation addressed most
directly by extensive federal arts funding (Throsby and Hollister 2003: 57–58;
Throsby and Petetskaya 2017: 109). For the most part, to achieve success in the
Australian music business is often to travel abroad or to negotiate relation-
ships with the international sector.
Over time, a clearer approach to the challenges of this sector has started
to formalize. Research from Australian contemporary music environments and
creative industries mapping (see Flew et al. 2001; Hughes et al. 2016; Rogers
et al. 2004; Whiting and Carter 2016) draws out the details of Australia’s music
industry, emphasizing its precarity. In response, the  ‘portfolio career’ has
become a popular concept in music industry education. Bridgstock (2005: 40)
describes the portfolio career as a means by which individuals ‘enhance their
human capital through active career navigation; [and] seek employment secu-
rity no longer, but opt instead for security in employability’ (also see Bennett
2008; Bartleet et al. 2012). This career model has characterized Australian
music careers for some time. In 2017, research by Throsby and Petetskaya
(2017) for the Australia Council for the Arts found that the median musician
income was AUD 9900 per annum, with 60,000 practising musicians registered
with Australia’s royalties collection agencies APRA and AMCOS. This means
that most musicians are earning well below the national minimum wage.
Cunningham and Higgs (2010: 5) claim that performing arts workers – ‘typi-
fied by instrumental musicians’ – have a particularly high rate of part-time
employment, at 69 per cent. While data on the plight of music-related ancillary
workers is less prevalent, this category accounts for 30 per cent of the music-
related job market (Cunningham and Higgs 2010) and existing studies posi-
tion them as lower income and underemployed (Throsby and Hollister 2003).
Many music graduates work in sole-operator businesses, small-to-medium
enterprises or in a freelance capacity. It is a sector that demands entrepreneur-
ship and risk-taking of even its entry-level employees.
How then has the Australian higher education sector responded to the
state of the popular music industry? In a global context where formal training
in popular music, both from a performer and industry perspective, is dramati-
cally on the increase (see, e.g., Born and Devine 2015; Bylica and Wright
forthcoming 2019), a number of music-related degrees have assembled an
Australian popular music pedagogy that addresses vocational outcomes (see,
e.g., Carfoot et al. 2017). Also relevant are similar challenges encountered
abroad; Parkinson and Dylan Smith (2015) provide a key study of the United
Kingdom’s popular music education environment, investigating the uneasy
negotiation between vocationalism, multivariate notions of ‘authenticity’ and

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 Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music education context

popular music studies’ origins in cultural studies. The degree we focus on in this 1. The institutional review
at RMIT (which resulted
article is the three-year Bachelor of Arts (Music Industry) (henceforth Music in the studio model)
Industry) undergraduate degree taught at the Melbourne city campus of RMIT is not uncommon in
University (henceforth RMIT). The design of the degree represents years of Australian institutions.
Indeed, Carfoot et al.
refinement within the music industry programme by the authors of this arti- have observed the
cle and their colleagues, and incorporates responses to issues around chang- emergence of what
ing skill requirements identified both locally and internationally. However, we they call a ‘series
model’…
posit in this article that it must also respond to specific institutional require-
ments, and at times the solutions proffered to the varying demands on the in cases where
institutions have
programme are by no means completely ideal, as we further elaborate in proceeded through
subsequent sections. The true benefit of our approach to the studio model multiple processes
of review, planning
remains, above all else, its medium-term flexibility. and implementation,
In this article, we look at a single case study of a  ‘studio’ class which is resulting in the
housed within the degree programme. The term  ‘studio’ suggests a physical adoption of
new methods or
space that can be used for creating, and it can also be associated with audio pedagogies that
production rooms. However, the term has been adapted and expanded for supplant previous
educational contexts, such as ours, to encompass a particular approach to approaches, or
indeed in the
teaching that may or may not take place in a dedicated space. Indeed, Peterson establishment
et al. define a studio as  ‘a culture, within which creative practice is facili- of completely
new degrees or
tated and a creative ethos is embedded’ (2012: 9; also see Harpe et al. 2012). programmes of study.
Derived from the studio formats used in architecture and design curriculum, In some cases, the
the ‘studio model’ (as it is termed at RMIT) involves learning through doing, series model can be
seen as following
whether this involves hands-on vocational training or campus-based projects. social and cultural
The aim of this article is to examine how such a studio model approach offers changes in musical
students a mode of learning that will equip them for navigating a portfolio style and taste.
(2017: 141)
career in the Australian music industry and develop career competencies. We
begin with a background as to why the studio model was adopted at RMIT,
followed by scholarship describing the nature of the studio. We then evalu-
ate our case study studio within the Music Industry degree, which involves
students working with an industry partner in 2017 to deliver an on-campus
music festival called Copresents.

Designing studios for the Music Industry programme

In 2015, staff were asked to restructure, rewrite and rethink every part of the
Music Industry degree to incorporate studio-style teaching and learning.
The motivation to redesign curriculum resulted from an institutional review
of the governing School of Media and Communication, under the leader-
ship of a Dean who came from a background in architecture where studios
were commonplace.1 The Music Industry degree is one of the smaller degrees
in the School, with an annual student intake that is capped at around 60–70
students. While most of the students who accept places in the programme
are musicians, it is clearly not a Bachelor of Music degree; staff do not teach
performance or composition, although there are parts of the degree that give
students practical skills such as how to create music with software platforms
such as Ableton Live. The focus is instead on teaching students what the
music industry is (including critical and historical approaches arising from
popular music studies and cultural studies) and how to succeed in the domes-
tic and international industries.
During this redesign, staff needed to determine what a studio might look
like for the Music Industry degree. The administration’s flexible approach
to the studio meant that staff could effectively create and modify studios to

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graduates’ professional needs, and change them from semester to semester.

Music Industry staff created 24-credit-point courses that were a combination
of more traditional all-cohort lectures and tutorials alongside focused studios
of two or three hours with smaller groups of 20–25 students. The retention of
lectures was partly in response to the types of tensions noted by Parkinson
and Dylan Smith (2015) in relation to the balancing of vocational and criti-
cal aspects of popular music studies. Lectures ensure delivery of key critical
content not suited for studio learning, such as historical overviews of concepts,
theories and practices, and critiques of the music industry that would be diffi-
cult to convey if there were concerns about offending industry partners. It also
ensured that students were able to socialize with others in their cohort as
much possible. This decision was made in response to the informal structure
of much of the music industry in Australia, as described above, where staff and
students saw networking with other future industry participants as being an
important aspect of students’ education (see Higdon 2018). As such, increas-
ing their contact with their peers, and with as many of their peers as possi-
ble, was seen as an important pedagogical approach that related to graduate
outcomes (and this was made explicit to students).
The studios incorporated self-directed activities, negotiated between
students and a staff mentor who either had industry experience or was
connected directly to an outside partner. In this way, our studio model encour-
aged experiential and student-led learning (Biggs and Tang 2007; Ramsden
2003), but with a particular focus on creative outcomes and vocational prac-
tice. Although the outcomes of studio courses are more centrally organized
than some forms of student-centred learning, student input into decision-
making in studios created a sense of ownership and participation, as discussed
in the ‘students as partners’ literature (see Healey et al. 2014), set within the
restrictions that one might expect from working in the creative industries (i.e.
limited budgets, stakeholder-oriented tasks, contingent planning).
It has been suggested that studios might take one of four forms: ‘[l]earning
through project-based work; learning through  “praxis”; learning through
tool or skill based workshop activities; [or] learning from first hand observa-
tion’ (Studio Teaching Project 2015 n.p.). The Music Industry studios borrow
from this model and combine the four forms to some degree. They encour-
age  ‘active learning’ (Chickering and Gamson 1987: 4) through experience-
based activities that require students to seek out and apply knowledge and
skills to collaborative projects. In instances where a studio approach is imple-
mented without students having a dedicated space to undertake their activi-
ties in – which is likely, given the space constraints in universities, especially
urban universities like RMIT – the difference between a studio and project-
based learning can be difficult to determine. Indeed, the case study outlined
in this article can also be described as an example of project-based learning
(Fleischmann 2015), and of a work-integrated learning (WIL) project (Draper
and Hitchcock 2006) because of the involvement of an outside industry part-
ner (as explained in the following section). It needs to be acknowledged that
the use of the term ‘studio’ to describe this project is in some ways simply a
response to university narratives. However, as Nair (2011) notes, the design
of studios allow for learning that is responsive to (1) the collaborative nature
of the twenty-first-century workplace, (2) creative thinking that is desir-
able in the corporate world and (3) students’ development of written, oral,
research, visual and technological literacies (also see Carpenter et al. 2013),
and it is these characteristics that have been particularly emphasized in the

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 Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music education context

Music Industry approach. This also should be understood as existing in an

environment where RMIT as a whole emphasizes connections with industry
as a strength of the university, and encourages degree programmes to develop
and utilize these as much as possible. For this reason, ‘studio’ is used in this
article, instead of ‘project-based learning’ or ‘WIL’. We will demonstrate how
the studio model, as defined above, has the potential to assist students with
developing portfolio careers, which will assist them in addressing employment
challenges in the contemporary Australian music industries. This is managed
within the confines of the competing priorities of the university as an institu-
tion, the industry partner and the students.

Case study: The Copresents studio

The following case study provides insights into how students worked
alongside an industry partner to create and deliver a significant live music
event held on the RMIT campus. Although variations of this studio, known
as ‘Copresents’, were taught in 2015 and 2016, our focus is on 2017 iteration
of the studio when, for the first time, the studio was held in both semesters of
the academic year rather than just one semester. This new scheduling enabled
focussed, long-term engagement for students from March to May, and July
to October. Students were not obliged to enrol in both semesters of the
Copresents studio; however, almost all students chose this option. In analys-
ing the success of this studio, we draw upon a dataset comprising feedback
from students in two different formats. The first is the open-ended data from
the formal student feedback tool utilized by RMIT. This data is anonymized by
the university before being sent to teaching staff. The second dataset is drawn
from an assessment in the class where students were asked to reflect on their
experiences in creating the festival as part of their studies. This data is much
more extensive, and while the nature of it (where they are formally assessed
and are therefore identified) means there may be some self-censoring by
the students, they have demonstrated a willingness to present constructive
critiques of aspects of the Copresents studio that show an authentic engage-
ment with this piece of assessment, as opposed to attempting to placate mark-
ers with positive assessments of the studio. The use of both of these datasets
for research purposes is permitted by RMIT, and all necessary steps have been
taken to ensure no identifying information has been included in this article.
The fact that the Copresents studio exists independently across two
semesters is ideal given the studio has the goal of staging an open-air daytime
boutique music festival on RMIT’s Melbourne city campus near the end of
the calendar year (the 2017 festival took place on 11 November). The studio
enabled students to play a critical role in devising and creating a real-world
industry event with tickets for sale to the general public. This high-risk envi-
ronment was tempered by the guidance of a member of staff from the Music
Industry degree’s core industry partner, the Mushroom Group: an interna-
tionally recognized and long-established music publishing and record label
company (henceforth  ‘Mushroom’ as per the abbreviation commonly used
in the industry). As such, the students learned about the social, cultural and
economic aspects of a music festival as well as the practical management of
people, from food truck traders to security staff and the musicians. Importantly,
the name of the festival, like the name of the studio, is ‘Copresents: the collab-
orative music experience’ whereby the latter descriptor reflects RMIT’s collec-
tive delivery of the event with Mushroom alongside a number of commercial

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2. The name of the sponsors, such as a clothing company and beverage supplier.2 These commer-
festival has, from
2018, been changed
cial sponsors change from year to year, helping the students to develop the
to City Loop to reflect entrepreneurial skills needed for networking with industry, as well as enabling
a number of changes them to develop their own industry contacts beyond the education setting
to the brand direction
of the event as well in preparation for future employment. In sum, the Copresents studio devel-
as acknowledge ops student knowledge of event management principles and practices, gives
the festival’s close the students insights into other roles in the industry (such as artist manager,
proximity to the
city’s circle loop publicist or booking agent) while engaging with key industry stakeholders
train line. To ensure and providing networking opportunities for the students.
consistency within
the structure of the
The studio needs to be briefly contextualized in the broader three-year
degree, the name of the degree programme. The programme’s studios have been designed across the
studio has remained first two years to scaffold students’ learning by gradually increasing the  ‘real
as ‘Copresents’.
world’ component of what they are doing. In the first-year studio classes,
there are other live events organized by students. While these are events that
members of the public can attend, these are done entirely within the structure,
and in conjunction with different sections, of the University. This provides
the students with a relatively low-risk environment at this early stage of their
studies, enabling them to experiment with pre-professional identities, in a
space where mistakes have limited consequences that can usually be quickly
resolved by a staff member. This is where tacit competencies are built. In the
Copresents studios for the second year of the degree, the stakes are higher.
The students are working with Mushroom as industry partner, rather than
just with RMIT staff, and the event is on a much larger scale, with poten-
tially thousands of attendees. If the Copresents festival that they are work-
ing towards does fail, there would be financial consequences for Mushroom
Records. Naturally, there are still some safety nets for the students: the event
is still contained within RMIT’s campus rather than offsite, which gives staff
some ability to intervene if problems arise, and the students do not have
complete autonomy because they are guided by a Mushroom employee. These
experiences allow students to develop a sense of agency in the presence of
organizational risks, which becomes valuable for their third-year internships
and major project, where responsibility for outcomes rest much more squarely
on their own shoulders.
In 2017, the studio’s sole deliverable was the Copresents festival, with the
goal of building on the successes of 2016’s festival in terms of scale, brand
awareness, artist visibility and audience numbers. One of these was easily
achieved: the attendance in 2017 was almost double that of 2016. The festi-
val’s all-Melbournian 2017 line-up, which was co-curated by Mushroom and
the approximately twenty students who participated in the studio, included the
artists REMI, Slum Sociable, Manu Crook$ and Wax’o Paradiso, among others,
as indicated on the official festival website (https://www.copresents.com.au/).
There were two stage areas across the RMIT campus site: the main stage, which
had the sponsored title of ‘Red Bull Sound Select’ and featured indie bands, hip
hop artists and soloists, and a smaller DJ stage area called ‘Soothsayer’ to reflect
the name of a sub-label of Mushroom. The dual performance spaces enabled
students to experience the realities of running a comparatively large-scale
festival, and necessitated the allocation of official duties among the students,
such as Door Manager, Technical Support for Sound and Lighting, Artist
Liaison, Project Management, Stage Manager, Social Media Management
and Entry Door Management. The core skills required for all of these roles
are about people management and networking. These skills were developed
partly through the use of the Asana software platform, a task and information

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 Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music education context

management suite, which students used to coordinate their activities among

several work teams and manage project-related information.
The structure of the Copresents studio was one formal two-hour class held
weekly, with additional meetings as required in the lead up to the November
festival. This structure gave students an opportunity to respond to the studio’s
key reflective question ‘[w]hat is involved in the creation and production of a
major music/arts festival?’. During the classes, Alex Haeusler from Mushroom
provided guidance in his capacity as industry partner and also served as the
educational mentor. By identifying the value of student input as both decision-
makers and a key audience demographic for the festival itself, and involv-
ing students in planning the Copresents event, Haeusler worked to avoid a
common WIL problem of clashes between university and workplace cultures
and norms (Cooper et al. 2010: 6). However, as we describe below, this was
not always successfully achieved.
The assessment for the Copresents studio enabled students to reflect on
their own role in organizing the festival, and was an opportunity to debate
the cutting-edge concerns within the music industry that impact festivals.
There were, however, institutional restrictions that limited the effectiveness
of the assessment. First, the way that the studios have been organized means
that only two assessment pieces per semester are permitted by the university,
which can create issues when it comes to ensuring assessment is properly iter-
ative and allows for meaningful feedback to students upon which they can act.
This was partly ameliorated by having the studio run across two semesters,
meaning assessment in semester two could build on the work done in semes-
ter one. For example, the ‘Written Critical Reflection’ assessment in semester
two was the final opportunity for student to reflect on the entirety of their
self-directed learning, at a time when the festival itself was only weeks away,
building on previous assessment items that were more focused on specific
elements of the festival planning (see Table 1). The second major issue with
the assessment was that because the festival had to be held outside of the
university exam period to reduce disruption on campus, students could not
be assessed on their contribution at the festival itself. This created a situation
where a very small number of disengaged students did not even attend the
event, which we viewed as an extremely unfavourable outcome. Conversely,
students who showed high levels of engagement at the event reaped rewards
beyond university marks; these students developed stronger relationships

Assessment Details
Semester one
Assessment 1: Risk Assessment 500 word evaluation of the risks present at five different venues
and risk control strategies
Assessment 2: Festival Plan Group activity where students assess the feasibility of a site,
create a budget, risk plan and marketing plan for a mock festival
Semester two
Assessment 1: In-Class Debate Group debate on industry and festivals and a co-written 2000-
word report on the debate
Assessment 2: Written Critical 1500 words on the progress of the festival and the students’
Reflection involvement
Table 1:  Copresents studio assessment for 2017.

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with the industry partner and a number went on to find work in the industry
because of the impression they made during the festival.
Student feedback in 2017 indicated that the Copresents studio was a chal-
lenging yet invaluable learning experience, and that most students enjoyed
the opportunity to successfully plan and execute a large-scale, real-world
event. They described it as ‘enjoyable’, ‘a huge learning experience’ and in one
instance ‘easily the best subject I have done at University so far’. Feedback in
particular noted benefits in terms of increased knowledge of career options
and industry know-how, improved communication skills, and connections to
both peers and industry personnel. Feedback also identified some issues with
the model which were mainly about how the university environment limited
what could be achieved, and how students’ sometimes saw themselves as
being unable to fully contribute.
Our analysis of this data begins with the positive aspects. The two-pronged
approach to the weekly classes – whereby information was conveyed by an
industry partner and students also collaboratively brainstormed – was seen as
providing helpful insights into the real-world workings of industry. Students
recognized that the classroom was functioning in the manner of a professional
boardroom where a range of tasks relating to festival planning were under-
taken, from seemingly dull administration to more creative outlets such as
poster and website design, as the following two quotes from students highlight:

The classes never felt wasted on irrelevant topics, and always felt like
professional environments where the work that was done was relevant
and important to the planning of the event.

I enjoyed the classes thoroughly, and found that close engagement with
admin work regarding the festival was always extremely rewarding.

The fact that students were given the opportunity to participate in all the
different aspects of the festival planning gave them insights into the different
roles they could potentially take on in the industry, and the types of skills they
needed to succeed in these. This was noted by both students who had already
decided on their speciality and students who were still undecided about which
career path they would undertake. Students gained experience with a variety
of roles, which helped them think through the different options open to them
after graduation:

My new role of social media manager is helping me gain an understand-

ing of professional media marketing which is an experience I believe will
contribute greatly to any future career pathways that I venture down.

The task of curating a lineup that would be marketable and create hype
within the Melbourne music scene was very rewarding, and I imagine
will be very helpful to my career within the future [and also] my under-
standing of the Australian music industry.

It has helped me learn skills in almost everything in the Music Industry

and what sort of things working in the industry entails and the different
roles available.

Feedback also suggested that students who benefitted the most from the class
were those who realized that they could use the self-directed learning hours

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 Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music education context

outside of class time to continue working on the Copresents festival (rather

than relying on the studio leader for instruction or updates). It was these
active, self-directed students who fully embraced the practice-based learn-
ing beyond the classroom, and developed self-reliance, resilience and inde-
pendent learning habits, which are among key skills for developing portfolio
careers in the music industry (Bartleet et al. 2012: 36):

I believe I may have got more out of the class than others because I am
more keen to get involved and put in the time to do stuff outside of class
time as well as having a more set idea of what elements of the event
process I was most interested in being involved in.

In future iterations of the studio, finding ways to make the benefits of this type
of approach clearer to all students will be explored.
Effective communication was another valued skill that came from partici-
pating in the Copresents studio. In their feedback, students recognized the
importance of instigating and maintaining communication with artists, corpo-
rate sponsors, food and drink vendors (and so on), and how to sustain mutu-
ally beneficial working relationships with these people on the day of the
festival:

It has taught me how to work in a team (more so than the delegation

of working in groups for a project), the communication process and
language between artists/managers/labels as well as how to break down
every element of an overall goal and aim, and how to effectively work
through each section.

At the beginning I was able to contact some artists I have links to […]
which was a good experience for me to re-establish some of my contacts
and learn how to communicate with artists of interest in a profes-
sional manner – even though they did not end up on the final bill. Also,
communicating with [sponsor] and their media/events crew contributed
to my communication skills as I worked to set up meetings about PR
and fundraising.

Encouraging students to engage with the different communication networks

that exist in the music festival context can, however, be problematic, given
that some students are more communicative, confident and outgoing than
others. In some such situations, students found ways to use their peers to help
develop their communication skills. Such a dynamic was seen in the smaller
working groups within the studio, sometimes with very positive outcomes of
peer-to-peer support and learning.

As one of the few new students to join Copresents [in semester two], I was
briefed and guided a lot by my peers who boast far greater experience.

When we were told to sign up for [project management software]

Asana, my peers were having trouble navigating around it. I did my best
to help them out as I figured it out on my laptop.

At other times, the studio brought to light some of the challenges and benefits
of working in groups, and being considerate of other group members.

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One of the main things that I have learned is that organizing and facil-
itating music events involves a lot of patience and waiting, since you
often rely on others to communicate efficiently and that doesn’t always
happen. I have also learned that it is important to be a recipient of all
ideas that are put forward in discussion, and to be mindful of how to
discuss ideas that might not work, without putting others down.

Given that a well-developed network in the industry is one of the most

important resources that industry personnel can have at their disposal
(Christopherson 2009), the communication skills developed during Copresents
will help students create these for themselves. In addition, Copresents helped
to create the basis for such networks, both in terms of bringing students in
contact with people from industry, and developing their relationships with
their peers:

[The studio] has strengthened [my] friendships amongst my peers, even

leading to professional opportunities within my cohort. I have been able
to observe who of my peers is really passionate about doing the work,
and have been given scope to explore new ventures that have come
about as a result.

This suggests a very tangible, ongoing benefit from the studio that will be
available to the students once they leave university.
While this feedback indicates the value of class content, there were criti-
cisms about the duration of classes and how the academic calendar corre-
sponded with the deadlines for the November festival. Understandably, the
constraints afforded by a two-hour class that only meets one day a week can
impact the planning of an event that needs persistent attention:

Despite this class being one of the most hands-on and practical subjects
that we have done, I have found that it has been quite hard to get as
much out of the experience due to the way that the tasks that need to
be done are forced into the university schedule. Two hours of class time
is impractical when an event may require things to be done by certain
deadlines. This did make it difficult to stay totally involved in elements
of the process.

Because of the class scheduling, the studio leader continued working on the
Copresents festival outside of class contact time, as part of his position at
Mushroom, and kept the students updated with his progress. At times, this
meant making important decisions without student input. This system was
not always in favour with students, who occasionally felt left out of the project,
demonstrating some of the limits to collaboration which are a reality when
integrating a major industry event into the University structure:

There have been moments throughout the festival organization where

I have felt that my opinion and input was not really that valuable, due
in part to the fact that it was not our sole responsibility that this festival
succeeds, i.e. there is a corporation utilizing their employees on a full-
time basis working towards the eventuation of this festival. This did lead
to some loss of faith in my feeling a part of the Copresents team. In fact,
it brought to light that there were perhaps two teams involved (Music

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 Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music education context

Industry students & Mushroom professionals). I fully understand that

this aspect is part of the contract in that Mushroom are providing the
funds to make this event possible and the utilisation of us as students
is largely due to the fact that RMIT have a strong stance on student-
oriented learning experiences. However it was at times hard to feel more
than consultants, or as a tester of the demographic the event is appeal-
ing to.

Students also identified other institutional factors as having a negative impact

on their experience. A small number of students commented on the class size:

My involvement in the organization of this festival has not been as

hands on as others, partially due to the sheer size of the class.

Students thought that at times, especially in the earlier parts of the course,
there were just not enough jobs to go around, and this feeling of not contrib-
uting may explain why some students did not come to the actual event to help.
Given that currently 20–25 students is the minimum that a class is supposed
to have, and that a festival only needs a certain amount of work done, this is a
difficult problem to overcome.
Students participated less than their peers at times also due to a lack of
confidence in their own abilities.

If I am honest I don’t believe I have done as much of the work to do

with this festival so far as I could have. I don’t believe it is because I
don’t want to or I am lazy, I think it is because with some of the things
I didn’t really know what I was doing and so I would tend to sit back a
bit and let those who seemed to have a better grasp on it all to take the
lead and take charge. In hindsight I probably should have got myself
more involved

[…] if I’m being honest, as a whole I didn’t feel confident enough to get
involved in organizing an event where I was hardly familiar with the
artists. I also don’t have experience planning/organizing events of this
magnitude so therefore felt I needed a bit more guidance.

This type of feedback suggests that more needs to be done to identify students
who are lacking confidence, and find ways to build their skills up or assign them
tasks that will increase their confidence. Some students, as discussed earlier,
identified peers who had skills they could learn from and developed mentor-
ship-like relationships. In future, this type of mentoring could be formalized.

Conclusion
The Copresents studio allowed students to develop skills that will assist them in
building and sustaining portfolio careers. The students describe finding unex-
pected advantages to their experiences (self-direction), building and fostering
connections with classmates and members of their profession (networking),
reflection on their future career possibilities (entrepreneurial orientation) and
negotiating with both enthusiastic and challenging peers (emotional intelli-
gence); all commonly sought after attributes in portfolio and protean careers
research (Arthur and Rousseau 1996; Bartleet et al. 2012; Bridgstock 2005;

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Hall 2002). Students’ emotional investment in the knowledge and skills devel-
oped has been suggested to be crucial to effective learning (Thien 2003: 89).
As with other accounts of studio-type learning (i.e. Fleischmann 2015), work-
ing collaboratively on projects that have real-world consequences enhanced
students’ reported self-confidence and sense that they were engaged in an
authentic experience. Copresents participants were encouraged to trial tech-
niques practised in the music industries and events management and develop
the meta-competency of self-reflection necessary for successfully navigat-
ing a portfolio career. The studio model provides opportunities for develop-
ing students’ self-confidence by encouraging them to take responsibility for
problem solving and encouraging them to develop a  ‘pre-professional iden-
tity’ by becoming embedded in a community of practice within the university
(Jackson 2016, 2017). The transition from pre-professional to professional is
enhanced by the development of strong peer-networks and mentoring experi-
ences that may be facilitated by positive pre-professional experiences (Creech
et al. 2008). Evidence for such positive outcomes has been found in this evalu-
ation of the Copresents studio.
Success in these areas was evident despite the limitations to the studio
approach that were apparent in student feedback, and were observable by
staff. Despite the rhetoric of  ‘real world experiences’ at RMIT, there was a
limit to the extent to which the environment in which the students learn-
ing activities took place could fully resemble a music industry workplace.
Students could not be fully integrated into all aspects of the festival experience
simply because the festival planning continued when they were not formally
in class, and only some students pursued avenues for increasing their input
outside of class hours. University timetables and policies meant that while
the studio does involve genuine industry engagement the assessment falls
short of capturing the full extent of student involvement and effort. Class sizes
and variances in student confidence meant engagement and outcomes could
differ among the cohort. While some of these factors are beyond the control of
Music Industry staff, there are strategies that can be developed to reduce such
variation, some of which could be based on solutions students have described
implementing themselves at times during the studio.
Ultimately, however, we believe that studio classes with industry partners
or engagement have proven a successful model for addressing the portfolio
career within our student cohort. Learning environments have been designed
wherein students are scaffolded by a hierarchy of incrementally more difficult
tasks, all of which demand entrepreneurial thinking and action – often drawn
from marketing and business decisions aimed at supplying the cohort’s own
audience demographic. The result is a fast-moving classroom that builds both
capacity for individual and group learning, bolsters individual student CVs
and tacit skills development, all the while opening up the broader programme
to up-to-date industry know-how and potential research partners and sites.
The opportunities provided by wider adoption within other Australian music
programmes are broad-reaching, presenting further avenues for collaborative
and comparative research and learning.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Strong, C., Brunt, S., Cannizzo, F., Montano, E., Rogers, I. and Shill, G. (2019),
‘Adapting the studio model for the Australian popular music educa-
tion context’, Journal of Popular Music Education, 3:2, pp. 293–308, doi:
10.1386/jpme.3.2.293_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Catherine Strong is a senior lecturer in the music industry programme at
RMIT University in Melbourne. Her research focuses on gender inequality in
popular music, and issues relating to heritage, memory in that field. She is the
co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage and
Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry.
Contact: School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, GPO Box
2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia.
E-mail: catherine.strong@rmit.edu.au

Shelley Brunt is a senior lecturer in music and media in the School of Media
and Communication at RMIT University. As a popular music ethnomusicolo-
gist, Shelley focuses on ethnographic approaches to music research and has a
particular interest in the music cultures of Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
She is the co-editor of Perfect Beat: The Asia-Pacific Journal of Research into
Contemporary Music and Popular Culture, and recent publications include Made
in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge,
2018, with Geoff Stahl).
E-mail: shelley.brunt@rmit.edu.au

Fabian Cannizzo is a research officer and teaching associate, working across

Melbourne, Australia. He is investigating the career outcomes and sociol-
ogy of careers in the creative industries and the higher education sector. His
latest publications are The Social Structures of Global Academia (edited with
Nick Osbaldiston, Routledge, 2019), ‘Moral barriers between work/life balance
policy and practice in academia’ (with Christian Mauri and Nick Osbaldiston,
Journal of Cultural Economy, 2019), and ‘Tactical evaluations: Everyday neolib-
eralism in academia’ (Journal of Sociology, 2018). He is interested in the trans-
formation of creative and cultural work in liberal democratic societies.
E-mail: mrfabiancannizzo@gmail.com

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Catherine Strong | Shelley Brunt | Fabian Cannizzo | Ed Montano | Ian Rogers | Gene Shill

Ian Rogers is a senior lecturer in the music industry programme at RMIT

University, Australia. He is the author of numerous articles on musician ideol-
ogies, music policy and local music history. His latest publication is a mono-
graph titled Popular Music Scenes and Cultural Memory (co-authored with Andy
Bennett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
E-mail: ian.rogers@rmit.edu.au

Gene Shill is a music industry lecturer at the School of Media and

Communication at RMIT University. He is a creative practice, creative entre-
preneurship and record production specialist researching contemporary record
production, digital technologies and creative entrepreneurship in the global
creative economy. With a background in Jazz studies (saxophone), he has
released music on labels such as Ministry of Sound (AUS), Red Cherry Records
(Japan), Vicious Vinyl (AUS), Ridehouse Music (United Kingdom), Hed Kandi
(United States), and Interscope Records and has appeared on many record-
ings for Sony BMG and Universal artists worldwide.
E-mail: gene.shill@rmit.edu.au

Catherine Strong, Shelley Brunt, Fabian Cannizzo, Ed Montano, Ian Rogers

and Gene Shill have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format
that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

308   Journal of Popular Music Education