The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts

Mount Street, Liverpool, L1 9HF
Tel: 0151 330 3000
Fax: 0151 330 3131
Email: reception@lipa.ac.uk
Founding Principal and CEO: Mark Featherstone-Witty
Theatre and Performance Design and Technology Programme Leader: Joe Stathers-Tracey

Description

LIPA is dedicated to providing the best teaching and learning for people who want to pursue a lasting career in the arts and entertainment economy. LIPA provides education and training through a variety of styles of courses aimed at different age groups.

These include higher education programmes for applicants aged 18 and over - no upper age limit and performing arts classes for 4-19 year olds.

The birth of LIPA came from two people who were introduced to each other by Sir George Martin, the Beatles producer. They were Sir Paul McCartney and Mark Featherstone-Witty.

Paul says: "I had always dreamt of being able to help my wonderful home town of Liverpool in some way or other. When I discovered the 1825 building which had once been my old school was derelict, saving the building became urgent."

He had discovered the state of the building in the mid 80s. He was making a home movie reminiscing about his days as a schoolboy while wandering around his old school. The building itself was a Liverpool landmark with an illustrious history.

When Paul entered the Liverpool Institute for Boys (as it then was) in 1953, it was a premier Liverpool grammar school. George Harrison was also a pupil. By 1985, the school was surplus to requirements because of inner city population decline and drift. There simply weren't enough pupils to ensure the school was economically viable. Paul made the effort to discover that the building couldn't simply be sold by the local council (then the Trustee of the building) and the money spent on something not covered by the trust document. Basically, the building had to be used for education; the council didn't have any need for this use and also couldn't afford to renovate either. So, the building was in limbo.

As Paul says: "As if by magic, Mark appeared." Mark had been fired up by Alan Parker's 1980 film ‘Fame', a film about the New York High School for the Performing Arts. The film inspired him to think about what training would have best prepared him (because he'd acted for a while) and others for a lasting career in the arts and entertainment economy. The film gave him the idea that performing artists needed to train in all three performing arts (acting, dance and music) at the same time. Then he read a book about musicians who had failed to understand they were entering a business, despite the phrase ‘show business'. He also took on board the idea that performers formed the tip of an arts and entertainment employment iceberg. Performers were a fraction of the employment. From these basic concepts, he created a blueprint for a new type of training and then spent three years quizzing the industry and refining his philosophy. By 1985 he had nearly 50 artists, directors, choreographers and entrepreneurs backing him.

Mark formed a charity called the Schools for Performing Arts Trust (SPA Trust) to start a secondary school in London, which he did finally with the help of Sir Richard Branson and the British record industry. It was The BRIT School in Croydon. George Martin was Mark's appeal chairman and introduced him to Paul who was now very interested in finding a new purpose for his old school.

And that's how the two came together with George playing the part of an entrepreneurial matchmaker. He says: "Now that LIPA is a reality, one can see how justifiable all the effort was. The building is great, the conversion brilliant, but best of all, the spirit of the people is a real high, which must be a reward in itself."

But there needed to be another partner - the City of Liverpool. In 1989 Liverpool City Council had commissioned Pete Fulwell, then managing the Liverpool band The Christians, to look into initiatives which could build on the city's reputation as a music city. He subcontracted the training element of that report to the SPA Trust.

Paul needed to find a use for his old school, Mark wanted to take the philosophy beyond school education and the City of Liverpool wanted a training initiative to help the next generation of music and performing arts makers. This was indeed true serendipity.

The struggle to create the facility and the school took seven years and is fully described in Mark's book ‘Optimistic, Even Then'. It wasn't easy, but then, as Paul reminds Mark from time to time, ‘if it was easy, everyone would be doing it'. It took £20m for the facility, the curriculum and the support to maintain and develop all three.

From the start, in 1995, the desire and so the challenge was to achieve excellence with access. The final solution was to offer higher education courses to achieve excellence and a range of open and flexible learning courses to achieve access. To this day, both embody the heart of the Institute.

Nearly 190 HE students enrolled on six inter-related degree programmes for September 1995, but, because of building delays, started their studies in January 1996. By January 1996 the Inauguration took place to thank the supporters who had helped a dream become a reality. There was an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and pride. During his speech, Paul wished his parents could have been alive to witness the event, while Mark hoped that, one day, students would experience the feelings he was experiencing then. Later, on 7th June 1996, Her Majesty the Queen officially opened the building.

The Institute began by offering six inter-related types of Performing Arts degree: Performing Arts (Acting), Performing Arts (Community Arts), Performing Arts (Dance), Performing Arts (Enterprise Management), Performing Arts (Music), Performing Arts (Performance Design).

Today, LIPA believes it is the only UK institution devoted entirely to the provision of higher education programmes across the spectrum of the performing arts. The advice offered by practitioners in 1980 met a need. The Institute has some of the highest application rates for its degree programmes in the country.