<p>Dear </p><p>UCP Marjon is about to launch a new degree programme in Live Music and we’re really keen to establish relationships with institutions in the area providing A level and BTEC courses for students who are intent on entering the music industry. I should stress that our provision will cater not only for performers but for individuals who have an interest in the live music industry in its broadest terms. We’re looking for potential agents, managers, instrumental technicians, sound engineers, promoters as well as performers.</p><p>Our overriding philosophy is driven by the desire for our course to be as relevant to the modern live music industry as we can make it, by providing input from industry practitioners of a very high standing and by giving our students the opportunity to experience professional working practices first hand. We are convening an advisory panel of leading industry experts to make sure that graduates leave our institution with a degree that really means something within their chosen profession.</p><p>We have many innovative initiatives planned for our students, they will be given their own free laptop, they will be running real events and they will be working offsite with industrial partners in their final year. For that reason we will be restricting the size of our first cohort in 2009 to enable us to strictly monitor the students’ progress and learning experience during their studies. Each place on the course will be awarded after successful completion of a short interview/audition.</p><p>If you feel that what we are proposing would appeal to any of your students we are offering two opportunities for them to speak to us face to face about the course. Firstly we are holding an event on November 19th, to which staff and students are welcome. Secondly, if there is enough interest from your students and you are unable to attend the event we will arrange for a course representative to come to your institution and give a presentation. </p><p>We very much want each of these occasions to be an opportunity for your students to show us what they can do too and we are hoping that this will happen in a couple of ways. Firstly, anyone sufficiently interested in what we are offering can be interviewed/auditioned on the spot, rather than waiting for the audition dates in the New Year. Secondly, we are offering performers the opportunity to audition for an appearance at the Marjon Live gig series. They can even combine the two, audition for the gig and the course at the same time.</p><p>I hope that our new venture is of interest to you and your students and that we will have the opportunity to meet you on November19th . We will obviously need to monitor numbers for this event and so once you’ve had a chance to mention this to your students someone from our schools and college’s liaison team will contact you to gauge your level of interest.</p><p>Best wishes,</p><p>Tim</p><p>Dr T Sayer Programme Leader Live Music University College Plymouth St Mark and St John Derriford Rd, PL6 8BH [email protected] </p>