RIAM Holistic

RIAM Holistic Booklet, 2024-2025

RIAM Holistic responds to the current need for musicians to possess myriad capabilities if you are to create and sustain a livelihood in music.

Four core areas are addressed in the Futures Learning module:

Somatic Practices
Personal Development,
Professional Development
Cultural Agency.

Somatic Practices focus on preventing or rehabilitating performance-related injuries and reducing anxiety for musicians.

Personal Development focuses on developing your awareness and understanding around psychological health and reflective practices, and their impact on your ability to meet the demands of the profession.

Professional Development is designed to equip you with the tools and techniques required to meet the demands and realities of an ever-changing music profession.

Through Cultural Agency, you will engage in creative activities that contribute to society through performance, pedagogy, and research.

Years 3 & 4

Years 3 and 4 choose from a range of cross-faculty modules. In 2021/2022, the modules include the following (click on links below to expand):

Storytelling is a powerful communication tool that we can use to reach out to and connect with our audiences.

Programming, presentation, social media strategy, digital content can all tell our story and communicate our personal brand. Discover how to shape a programme, experience, and journey for your audience to best represent your personal brand

Gain an understanding of your current financial situation and learn how to manage your future finances in order to make the most of your assets in day-to-day life. Learn how to create a budget and manage your taxes.

Growth Mindset = Passion, Positivity, Perseverance, and Proactivity.

Mindset can be defined as your attitude and how you perceive the world based on your experiences. For musicians discovering their future possibilities, the most important tool they can be equipped with is a productive mindset so they can overcome future challenges.

Learn how to control your career goals, whether as an individual performer or as part of a group or organisation.

You will learn to explore how set objectives and realise them, project development, accessing funding and supports, building partnerships, maximising opportunities, approaching auditions and interviews, managing your online presence, budgeting, and scheduling.

Explore the field of music, health, and wellbeing. Examine the results of recent research into the psychological and physiological impact of music for mental and physical health. Gain an insight into how music can be used support specific needs within health. Develop practical skills for delivering effective performances in health contexts.

Learn the skills needed to develop, manage, and thrive as a creative and/or cultural entrepreneur, even if you do not have any previous business experience.

Creative and Cultural entrepreneurship is defined by those who practice it; the mindsets that drive them, the principles they employ to accomplish their work, and the impact that work has on the wider community.

The ability to make meaningful creative and cultural contributions to society through an economically viable and sustainable model is a unique skill, one that will be nurtured and developed over this course.

This course offers interested students an introduction to the Interactive Teaching Method (ITM) approach to Alexander Technique.

We will see how the experience gained through a study of Alexander’s work can help us improve our mental and physical performance in our everyday and specialised activities.

Yoga is about balance. Yoga teaches you how to use your body and breath to restore balance in all the layers of your being.

You will be guided in your yoga practice to strike a balance between strength, stamina, flexibility and awareness.

Develop awareness and understanding around psychological health and its impact on the ability to meet the demands of the profession

In addition to the cross-faculty modules offered by RIAM, faculty-specific personal and professional development opportunities may present themselves throughout the year, either within RIAM or beyond. These Holistic+ experiences might include performance projects, professional mentoring schemes, workshops, seminars with professionals, and masterclasses.