Exchange Talks and Events

Catherine Lee | Interspecies collaborations with the Bombyx Mori (domestic silkworm moth)

Art & the Anthropocene 1

Alex South | Multispecies Sonic Socialities and the Sound of Stranding

Art & the Anthropocene 2

Alasdair Campbell and Ryan Gleave | Plug Festival Panel Discussion – Composition Now

Chaired by Oliver Searle

Performance Series

Lucy Allan | A Composer Walks into a Barre – creating a new work of electronic music for the RCS Modern Ballet showcase

Performance Series

Tawona Ganyamatopé Sitholé | Mutupo: circles of interflow

Art & Identity 1

Mercy Ojelade | Seeing Yourself in the Play: Whose Role is it Anyway?

Art & Identity 2

Maggie Bain | How Motion Capture and XR Are Redefining the Actor-Audience Relationship (19th January 2026)

Art and Virtual Reality Series

Discover the challenges and opportunities new extended reality (XR) and motion capture technologies present for actors, traditional acting techniques, and the future of storytelling. With Maggie Bain, chaired by Jazz Hutsby.

Robert Laidlaw | The Past, Present and Future of Actually Interesting Musical AI (26th January 2026)

Art and Virtual Reality Series

Find out more about using ‘AI’ in creatively useful and ethical ways through the long history of composing, performing and thinking surrounding music and intelligent machines. With Robert Laidlaw, chaired by Miriam Iorwerth.

Jazz Hutsby | Exploring the Creative Potential of the Unreal Engine; The Story So Far… (9th February 2026)

Art and Virtual Reality Series

Discover how digital technologies, such as the 3D games engine ‘Unreal Engine’, and motion capture, could be used by creatives to explore ideas and concepts, or create new media. With Jazz Hutsby MEd, chaired by Shilpa T-Hyland.

Pasquale Iannone | A Parisian Playground: Re-visiting Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie (16th February 2026)

Performance Series

Ahead of our Musical Theatre production of Amélie in March, join Dr Pasquale Iannone to explore the artistic influences on the original 2001 film, and its impact on audiences.

Released in France in April 2001, Amélie was both a box office sensation and a critical success. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s vibrant, warm-hearted comedy stars Audrey Tautou as a shy young Parisian waitress who concocts various schemes to spread happiness to those around her.

Steeped in nostalgia for the post-war Paris of Jeunet’s childhood, the film draws on classic French painting, literature, music and above all, cinema. In this richly illustrated talk, Dr Pasquale Iannone will discuss Amélie’s many artistic influences and explore the reasons why both domestic and international audiences embraced the film’s charm.

Anselm Heinrich | Entertaining the Nation During War-Time: ENSA – a re-assessment (2nd March 2026)

Art, Time and Place Series

ENSA, The Entertainments Service Association which entertained the armed forces in war-time Britain has been both forgotten and belittled. Dr Heinrich offers a reassessment of ENSA as in fact operating counter to capitalist theatre principles, creating a truly National Theatre even if not by design. With Dr Anselm Heinrich, chaired by Alan Jones.

Annual Student Research Showcase (16th March 2026)

Find out what some of our research students are working on, in an evening of fast paced presentations. You’ll get a glimpse into the wide range of research at RCS from students at various stages of their projects.

• Connor Civatte – Scottish Traditional Music, Video Game Music, and Breaking Cultural Codes
• Gregory Ha – Resonance, Ritual, and Silence: Interpreting Contemporary Korean Piano Music
• Sholpan Sharbakova Miller  – Unravelling the Artistry of Nikolai Medtner through Contemporary Art Forms
• Kenneth Tay – Composing the Future: Sustaining the Ecology of Choral Creativity
• Mujie Yan – Folk Music and Patriotic Nostalgia: A comparative analysis of Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů’s keyboard music
• Jiaquan Yang – Growing up Under the Spotlight：The Hidden Roots of Performance Anxiety

Robin Peoples | Design-for-Performance – Collaborators In and Beyond Theatre (20th October 2025)

Art & Collaboration Series

Robin Peoples draws on his extensive experience to compare and contrast design-for-performance in collaboration with theatre companies and venues, and with cultural and creative organisations such as museums and heritage agencies.

Kenneth Tay | Whose Music is it Anyway? Composition as Collective Practice (27th October 2025)

Art & Collaboration Series

Kenneth Tay draws on his experience as a composer working with performers and intercultural tradition to challenge images of the composer as a solitary figure, asking: Whose voices shape a piece of music? What does collaboration look like in practice? Can collaboration change the way music is written and heard?

Steve Halfyard & Nick Reyland | TV Sound Design is the New Score: Fresh Approaches to Audiovisual Analysis (3rd November 2025)

Art & Collaboration Series

Prof. Steve Halfyard and Prof. Nicholas Reyland reflect on their 2024 Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Peak TV. In two mini-talks they argue that in contemporary television, sound design often functions as dynamically as a traditional musical score, shaping narrative, character, and audience perception.

Larry Bogad | Tactical Performance: The role of Theatrics in Social Movement Organizing (17th November 2025)

Art and Protest Series

L.M. Bogad explores the history, ethics, aesthetics, and practical concerns of tactical performance and creative activism. First examining the powerful sociodramas created by the American Civil Rights Movement and the American Indian Movement, followed by other groups such as the Yippies, the Wobblies and ACT-UP. The talk then examines these groups’ descendants such as Billionaires for Bush, Reclaim the Streets, The Clown Army, and the Yes Men. Bogad draws on 25 years of experience as an artist-activist, having worked with most of the contemporary groups he discusses as a writer, performer and strategist.

Jessica Argo | Resonant networks: Feminist Improvisation across sites, identities, and technologies (24th November 2025)

Art and Protest Series

Jessica Argo will share audio visual documentation and reflective insights from an article in press for Improfil Journal: Theory and Practice of Improvised Music, from the International Instititute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. The article was written, pondered and collated across multiple geographies – from India to Scotland and England – and from diverse experiences of migration, travel and belonging. A piece, titled Unbound, inspired by the River Yamuna was created by Surbhi Mittal and performed in multiple locations. By sharing a detailed account of how this piece was created and performed, she offers practice-based insight into the intersecting fields of improvisation, gender studies and socio-technologies. The potential of telematic collaboration as an emancipatory practice, particularly for marginalised groups, will be also discussed.

Leonor Estrada | Geographies of Political Performance in Times of Protest: Bodies-Territories-Stages
(1st December 2025)

Art and Protest Series

In the face of authoritarian repression: How do social protests and performative political actions in the city intertwine to generate and regenerate spaces of hope through conviviality, carnivalization, and laughter? In 2022, Peruvian police assassinated dozens of people. The streets of Lima became a stage of daily acts of resistance. Political performances by artists had a mutually intertwined relationship with the protest movements of which they were a part, creating symbolic and carnival-like spaces of conviviality on ephemeral stages that emerged and dissipated according to the collective presence of protesters/audiences and artists/performers. How do we use the frameworks of Performance Studies to consider the stages, actors and actions that emerge in political protests? How do actual performances by artists weave into these contexts?