Women daring to be other-wise: Finding personal paths to transcend perceived conservatoire prejudices

This presentation explores how conservatoires might continue to evolve in their support of diverse learners in forming distinctive artistic identities in a context where the tension between individual artistic development and standardised curricula often disadvantages students with non-normative backgrounds or learning needs. Growing awareness of power dynamics, neurodiversity, gender, and musical heterogeneity has brought these formerly implicit challenges to the fore. Preparing for PGVIM’s ‘Mozart & Beyond’ International Festival in May 2026, I was struck by how Mozart in his mid-twenties deliberately questioned and reshaped his own identity to transcend societal constraints. I used this discovery as an initial stimulus for interacting with a small sample of female graduates from across the globe with the ambition of understanding each of their journeys of self-discovery. In each case, their evolution in self-assurance has also had a telling influence on their approach to music-making. Over a two month period, I interviewed eight women, about their journeys from conservatoire to professional life. I began by asking four framing questions with the aim being to identify institutional challenges they faced and the strategies they devised. In seeking underlying tendencies and tensions, the eight cases will be amalgamated and anonymised, with the aim of developing a fresh generic framework for evolving institutional culture. The presentation will begin with a PGVIM student performance of Mozart's song, The Violet, whose overlooked resilience mirrors the quiet determination I recognise in the former conservatoire students. Like Mozart, they too found their own paths, overcoming systemic prejudices. This work draws from the AEC’s Artemis Project, to which I hope it will be seen as a further contribution. I am grateful to the eight participants for their curiosity, courage, and for our dialogues which have been fundamental to shaping this final presentation.