Who inspires you?

If you have a passion for performing arts then you might want to consider studying at a conservatoire. Each conservatoire has its own particular strengths and subject specialisms. While they all offer music courses, only two offer drama courses.

Conservatoire students can be influenced by many different factors to pursue their ambitions. One of our bloggers, Charlotte Stevenson, shares what influenced her to follow her passion.

I am currently a first year classical vocal student at Leeds College of Music. It has been quite the year so far: exams and all.  So it is useful to look back every now and again to remember what it is that inspired me to apply and led to me being here.

There was no single epiphany for me leading me to decide that music was what I wanted to do for the rest of my further studies. It was always something which I enjoyed doing from being a child, but as my family was not especially musical my interest was limited to the music from around the house.

The radio was always on – Abba, Pink Floyd, Mozart, and co. There were many teachers, choirs, and opportunities which were crucial to assisting me to this point, but they were not the deciding factor that made me want to achieve this the most.

One of the biggest inspirations for me to reach beyond this was my Grandad. As although not directly musical, he supported me a huge amount in my interests and made sure that I did not give up on learning all of the musical content I needed to. Especially when it came to the less interesting theory-based content. He was extremely selfless in listening to my academic weaknesses and helping me to plan out how I was going to move forward to improve them.

Having taught himself to play the guitar and the cornet whilst in the army, it was he who taught me that we can be our own teacher and determine our own success, no matter what it is we do. Having realised this, I found it much easier to look at things from a perspective of how I could teach and improve myself as a performer. This was the only way that I managed to get through all of my exams and achieve the level of standard in them that I wanted to aim towards.

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