Included in The Australian National University’s announcement of a university-wide reorganisation seeking to save $100 million is the proposal that the ANU School of Music be downgraded to a program within a new School of Creative and Cultural Practice which will also house the ANU School of Art and Design and the ANU Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies.

Music School jobs will go, according to the Organisational Change Proposal document released on 3 July and seen by Limelight.

“To deliver on this new direction, it is proposed the School will realign its staffing profile to better support the restructured curriculum and emerging research priorities. While the positions proposed for disestablishment contribute to a range of teaching areas – including performance, composition, theory, and musicology – their overall academic profiles do not align with the future shape of the School’s offerings,” wrote the report’s author(s).

“These roles are not positioned to contribute to the research areas identified as strategic priorities, and their teaching responsibilities are concentrated in areas of declining student demand or pedagogical models no longer suited to the School’s redefined educational mission.”