New Initiatives Funding 2009-10
Monitoring and Evaluation
Please complete this evaluation form one month after the end date of the project. If
your project runs over a longer period we will ask for updates prior to the Skills
Training Forum meetings. We can help you with drawing up feedback forms to
evaluate your project and please send us any photos or newsletter reports etc.
Monitoring of New Initiatives Project
Title of project
Sound Thought 2009
Contact person /
email address
Chris Hutchings – c.hutchings.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Jo Clements – j.clements.1@research.gla.ac.uk
£434 awarded by New Initiatives Fund (of a total budget of
£5,410.10)
Funding required
Did the project meet its aims? If any of the aims or deliverables changed during
the course of the project please say why.
The aims and objectives of Sound Thought 2009 were:
 To provide professional, hands-on training in the delivery and publication of
materials in musicology (including popular music studies), composition and
music technology through preparation of materials, presentations and
research training workshops
 To enhance the music research environment at the university through
interdisciplinary collaboration and collaboration with researchers across and
beyond Scotland and with professional musicians.
 To present research into composition, musicology, popular music, music
history, performance and other elements in a context which contrasts, relates,
and contextualises them.
 To provide a venue for the exposition and promotion of postgraduate
research in music (including composition) across the University of Glasgow,
to both an academic and general audience.
 To engage the public with music research at the University of Glasgow and
promote understanding of the research field.
Sound Thought met its aims and objectives by:
 Providing an opportunity for 14 participants to prepare and deliver materials in
musicology (including popular music studies), composition and music
technology.
 Drawing participants and presenters from a total of eleven different
institutions across the UK and further afield, and from backgrounds in
musicology, composition, visual art, theatre, film and television studies and
engineering, in order to initiate interdisciplinary collaboration. Sound Thought
also brought in 6 professional musicians to collaborate with postgraduate
composers.
 Juxtaposing presentations from different areas of the discipline and related
disciplines. See for example the juxtaposition of Jennifer MacRitchie’s paper
Performing musical structures which focused on the movements performers
seem to use to communicate elements of musical structure visually to their
audience, with David Griffin’s paper Suitably Underspecified which explored
different visual representations of music.
 Providing a venue for the exposition and promotion of postgraduate research
Please return bids to the Researcher Development Initiative at No 10 The Square
(e.adams@admin.gla.ac.uk)

in music (including composition) across the University of Glasgow, to both an
academic and public audience. 14 postgraduates from the departments of
Music, Theatre, Film and Television, English Language, and Electronic and
Electrical Engineering at the University of Glasgow presented at Sound
Thought 2009. The total audience numbers over the whole event were 104.
Drawing in an audience from both the University of Glasgow academic
community and from the wider public.
The particular successes and achievements of Sound Thought 2009 were:
 Making an impact beyond the academic world by presenting a diverse
programme which attracted a diverse range of audiences.
 Exciting the audience and performers alike with the new music performed at
the two highly successful concerts.
 Launching two research training workshops which will hopefully become a
feature of the event in future years.
Who benefited from the project? Was this the intended group?
The following groups benefited from Sound Thought 2009 in the following ways:
 Presenters of compositions and papers gained experience in preparing and
presenting research for both academic and public audiences, and in writing in
a style appropriate to this purpose in order to articulate ideas clearly to a
range of audiences
 Presenters of compositions and papers gained experience in receiving and
responding to immediate feedback from an audience and in giving feedback
to their peers
 Presenters of compositions and papers had the opportunity to engage the
public in their research, raising their profile outside the academic community,
as well as within it
 Postgraduate composers gained experience in working collaboratively with
musicians and workshopping compositions
 Participants in the research training workshops had the opportunity to engage
critically with their own research practice through two research training
workshops – “Composition as research” and “Popular music research”
 All postgraduate students involved in the event had the opportunity to build a
co-operative network with postgraduate music researchers across Scotland
 The organizers had the opportunities to:
o Develop the skills for effective project management through the setting
of goals, intermediate milestones and prioritisation of activities
o Develop transferable skills necessary in the roles of artistic director,
treasurer and fundraiser, visual identity co-ordinator, publicity coordinator, equipment and technology manager, logistics and stage
manager and musicians’ co-ordinator in order to enhance future
employability
o Gain experience in organising a public and academic showcase
o Develop and maintain networks of professional musicians involved for
future collaborations
o Develop a programme which reflects the diverse facets of music
research at the University of Glasgow while maintaining the sense of a
cohesive whole
o Stimulate interaction and collaboration between postgraduate music
researchers across Scotland
o Promote music research at Glasgow University to the widest possible
academic and public audience.
o Develop good interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively as part
Please return bids to the Researcher Development Initiative at No 10 The Square
(e.adams@admin.gla.ac.uk)
o
o
of a team
Gain experience in raising funds from a variety of external funding
bodies and in budget management
Gain experience in the development of evaluation tools
These groups were the groups intended to benefit from Sound Thought 2009.
How did you evaluate the success of the project? (additional feedback can be
appended)
Sound Thought was evaluated in four ways:
 Participants in the research training workshops were asked to fill in an
evaluation form designed to assess the usefulness of the workshops in
providing training in subject-specific knowledge, the effectiveness of their
format, and which parts of the Sound Thought publicity were most effective at
reaching this audience.
 Postgraduates who presented compositions or papers were asked to fill in an
evaluation form designed to assess how useful Sound Thought had been in
providing training in areas A5, E1-4, F1 and F3 of the RCUK’s Joint statement
of the skills training requirements for research students.
 The audiences at the presentations of compositions and papers were given
the option of completing an evaluation form designed to assess which parts of
the Sound Thought publicity were most effective at reaching this audience,
whether the audience found attending Sound Thought worthwhile, and how
the audience thought Sound Thought could be developed.
 Informal verbal feedback from the audience, postgraduate students and
musicians was noted.
Would you recommend this project runs in future years or in other parts of the
University? Are there any changes or developments that you would make if it ran
again?
We would recommend that Sound Thought runs in future years. If the initiative was
to be repeated the following areas would be handled differently:
 The ‘Composition as Research’ workshop received some mixed evaluations.
In part this was due to low attendance (half of those registered on this
workshop failed to attend). This workshop could benefit from clearer
objectives and structure. We would consider charging a registration fee to
workshop participants in an attempt to discourage non-attendance.
 While Sound Thought provided training in preparing and delivering materials
in musicology (including popular music studies), composition and music
technology by providing a venue and audience, some further training in
delivery could have been beneficial to some presenters. If Sound Thought
was to be repeated such training could form the basis of one of the training
workshops.
 We would provide composers with more opportunities for rehearsal with
performers; perhaps a workshop day a few weeks in advance to allow for
revisions to scores if required.
 We would introduce a greater element of peer review into the selection of
papers, both to raise the standard of presentations, and as a training
opportunity.
 Sound Thought could have engaged the public with music research at the
University of Glasgow and promoted understanding of the research field more
effectively had it received greater media coverage in the lead up to the event.
Please return bids to the Researcher Development Initiative at No 10 The Square
(e.adams@admin.gla.ac.uk)