Dr Kate Blackstone talks to Katrina Damigos, Head of Teacher Training at Music Masters, about turning a conservatoire education into a career built on education, leadership and creating change through others.

.

What does your career currently look like?

Simply put, I train teachers! I am the Head of Teacher Training at Music Masters, where I am the course leader for the Musicians of Change PGCEi course which is a Master’s Level Teaching qualification for instrumental and vocal teachers we run in partnership with Birmingham City University. I began working at Music Masters in 2017 and began to lead on the teacher training in 2019.

So what are the main things you're doing in your job?

An average week will see me in a lot of meetings with my team: one-to-ones with students, talking to them about their work and and supporting them on the course, I might be delivering a twilight session to the students on various aspects of the course, talking to them about their assignments, things like that. I’m also part of the senior leadership team so we'll spend a lot of time together looking at our strategy and how we are meeting our goals. Other times I might be running an event somewhere outside of London.

In between all of that, I could be tuning violins if we need them for an event, or carrying wine glasses. However I'd say the main thrust of my work, through all of that, is relationships. It's making sure that I'm connected with all our beneficiaries, all our teams here, so that everybody is supported to do their best work in what can be quite challenging environments. I'm that person that people can talk to, people can get support from, and everything I do feeds back into the design of our programmes.

How did it all start for you? 

I was at the Purcell school, where I was joint first study violin and singing. At that time, singers weren't supposed to go to music college at 18: they were expected to do an undergrad first then switch and do a postgraduate in singing. So I went to the RNCM on violin, but really I was holding out for when I could switch over to singing. But unfortunately, that never happened, because I got really sick in my last year, and had to pause my studies to have eight months of treatment. So when I was well enough to return, I took the opportunity to go in a totally different direction, emailing lots of different universities in London to see if they would take me. Lots wouldn’t, but Royal Holloway did, so I went there to complete my studies, doing second and third year.

I’d worked hard at music college and had a really good academic track record in addition to my playing skills, and that made all the difference when applying to university. I studied lots of non-Western classical music including instruments such as gamelan and panpipes, which is where everything started to make sense for me. I realised that what I'd always loved most about music was how it contributes to society, how it brings people together and how it supports them in their lives. So I ended up doing a Master's in Ethnomusicology at SOAS.

How did you go from doing all this to doing what you do now at Music Masters?

I was always teaching to support my studies, but then started to see the connections between that and the wider function of music in society.  And it all just started to make sense. Then I decided that I wasn't reaching enough people through my teaching, because I could only fit in what I could fit in in a week. So that's when I applied to music masters, because I wanted to work for a charity who's work impacted more children's education. I started as a coordinator, doing everything from timetabling and tuning violins, to ordering stock. I grew into my role as Head of Teacher Training as I learned and understood more about teachers’ motivations and the support they needed.

How did your training help you do what you do now?

I think my wide range of experiences has helped me to understand the various perspectives I need for the role. Being able to speak musician, speak administrator, and speak University, has helped me to stand in lots of different camps and translate. It’s so much easier to relate to people if you have had the same training as them - and I sometimes think that musicians can be quite suspicious of people telling them what to do so it certainly helps when I can say I have been there too! In many ways teaching felt quite natural to me: I’m dyslexic and dyspraxic so I'm used to finding my own strategies. I'm used thinking about why I don't understand something or how I'm going to get from A to B. I knew that education was going to be the space where I could really flex those muscles. And I also figured out that the margin for creativity in education can sometimes be so much greater than it is for classical music performance!

What is the best piece of advice you ever received?

I don’t know if I was ever given any career advice…? But I did seek it out myself, through books and articles. SomethingI read that I really loved was “don't mess up your hello,” which I think about all the time. The energy that you bring into a space is so important, and you can set the tone with how you say hello. And it's such an easy thing to do, anyone can do it. You don't need to go and train - you can also just experiment and then reflect on how it changed the energy in the room, or how it helped you connect with that person.

What is the worst piece of advice you ever received? 

Again, I don’t remember getting any career advice… but I think that something really unhelpful is avoiding signing up to extra events or opportunities in college in favour of focusing only on your recital. Really those are exactly the things that you're going to need when you finish. You want to hit the ground running when you graduate and you don't want to have to just start from scratch, building those relationships and connections. If you have your head in the practice room then it can feel like a desert when you graduate. 

What advice would you give to someone hoping to build a career like yours?

Just make yourself indispensable - make it so that no one can do without you. You'll never be out of work if you’re really resourceful, and have a can-do attitude. I don't mean don't look after yourself! But I think people notice if you’re the kind of person that makes everything work: they just can’t ignore you. I’d also say it’s important to find your tribe. It's so energising and it helps you just block out all those unhelpful voices. With my work I want musicians to feel really unapologetic about being amazing teachers, and I want them to see the creativity and the intelligence and the kind of humanity that the job requires. To me that’s real artistry.

.

---

Katrina is the Head of Teacher Training Programmes and Course Leader for Musicians of Change (PGCEi) at Music Masters where she is dedicated to supporting musicians with training and community to thrive as inclusive leaders and educators. Katrina trained as a classical violinist and singer before graduating with a Masters in Ethnomusicology. She was a Clore Emerging Leader, holds a PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and is currently studying for her Strategic Leader Senior Leader Apprenticeship Standard (Level 7).

.

Read more Career Spotlight stories

Click here to sign up to the 21cMusician Newsletter