For 75 years, it has trained generations of stage and screen talent – the actors, directors, filmmakers, designers, producers and creatives shaping the arts.

And now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is marking this milestone by turning the spotlight on the people, past and present, who have made this Glasgow institution a global cultural powerhouse.

In 1950, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music (as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland was then known) established a College of Dramatic Art.

Since then, it has become an international centre of excellence that’s recognised as one of the world’s top destinations to study the performing and production arts.

From Hollywood, Broadway and West End stars to TV and theatre icons, and the visionary artists working behind the scenes, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has trained them all.

It’s where some of the world’s most celebrated performers and storytellers began their journeys, including actors James McAvoy (X-Men, Cyrano de Bergerac), Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who, Barbie); Laura Donnelly (The Ferryman, The Nevers), David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch), Sam Heughan (Outlander, Macbeth), Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty); Alan Cumming (The Traitors, Cabaret); Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Bodyguard); Kate Dickie (The Witch, Game of Thrones), Colin Morgan (Belfast, Merlin) and Tom Ellis (Lucifer, Tell Me Lies).

There’s screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917, Last Night in Soho); TV presenter and author Ruby Wax, theatre designers and Linbury Prize winners Basia Bińkowska and Cal Owens. RCS alumni also include some of Scotland’s most familiar faces, from Elaine C Smith, Jonathan Watson, Tony Roper and Denis Lawson to Maureen Beattie, Greg McHugh, Bill Paterson, and David Hayman.

And in a few weeks, the institution will honour another of its high-profile acting graduates and one of the leading lights in Scottish theatre, while two graduates, fresh from smash-hit runs in London’s West End, return to RCS to share their insights with a new generation.

Jack Lowden, the BAFTA and Olivier-award winning actor and BA Acting graduate, will receive an honorary doctorate at RCS’s autumn graduation on Thursday 30 October.

From his breakout role in the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch while still a student to starring in Apple TV+’s smash spy hit Slow Horses, he has fast become one of the UK’s most in-demand actors.

RCS will also honour Philip Howard, former director of Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.

The director and dramaturg was artistic director of Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre from 1996–2008, the longest tenure in its history, following three years as associate director.

From 2012–2015, Philip was Joint Artistic Director of Dundee Rep, and he has directed several productions for RCS.

He is also a founder of the Pauline Knowles Scholarship at RCS and is currently a director of Pearlfisher theatre company.

The 75th-anniversary performance season at RCS also sees two alumni return to direct students in productions in the New Athenaeum Theatre.

BA Acting graduate Finn den Hertog, who directed Jack Lowden to rave reviews this summer in The Fifth Ste – a two-hander with Martin Freeman in London’s West End – will direct Let the Right One In, from October 28-31, an adaptation of the 2018 vampire film, featuring final-year BA Acting students.

MA Musical Theatre alumnus and West End star Aaron Lee Lambert, straight from playing Agustín Magald in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita at the London Palladium, brings Sondheim’s classic musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street to life from December 2-5, with final-year BA Musical Theatre and MA Musical Directing students.

Dr Marc Silberschatz, Director of Stage and Screen at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, said:

“This is a special moment to mark 75 years of excellence in stage and screen education and celebrate the incredible range and richness of work created by our community.

“But this milestone is just as much about what lies ahead. The future of the arts belongs to the innovators – our students and graduates – whose courage and creativity will define the next chapter of performance on stage and off, and in front of the camera and behind it.”

RCS’s Archives and Collections have an exhibition in the Renfrew Street campus, outside the Ledger Recital Room, which traces the beginning of drama tuition at the school.

It starts with the Glasgow Athenaeum Dramatic Club in the 1880s, to the establishment of formal training in the College of Dramatic Art in 1950, to the renaming of the school to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. It concludes with contemporary exhibits from the School of Stage and Screen today.

Items include the institution’s first prospectuses, old performance programmes and a wooden make-up box, complete with sticks of greasepaint, part of the Alec Monteath Collection, bequeathed to RCS in 2021.

Alumnus Alec was an actor and broadcaster, best known for his portrayal as crofter Dougal Lachlan in the television programme Take the High Road.