The Department of Music at the University of Nottingham has secured a £1.2 million infrastructure award from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to advance practice-based research capacity and activate audiences of the future.
Already recognised as world-leading in research, this latest investment strengthens the Department's research capability to support The UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, specifically the Creative Industries - enabling innovation in music and performance, production and broadcast.
The AHRC award will enable cutting-edge innovation in immersive sound, performance, virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), music technology, and digital humanities. It will empower both practice-based researchers and musicologists to deepen collaborative research, pioneer new methodologies and outputs, and expand knowledge exchange and creative and cultural sector impact.
This AHRC award is a resounding endorsement of the Department's world-leading research. The investment enables us to significantly upgrade our spaces, building on a century-long tradition of music scholarship at Nottingham. By placing cutting-edge audio equipment alongside acoustic instruments like the new harpsichord and Steinway Spirio, the funding ensures our musical infrastructure matches the ambition of our researchers, securing the Department's position as an enduring beacon of creative innovation in the East Midlands."
The investment will deliver a step-change in facilities, introducing a state-of-the-art immersive surround-sound system with a dedicated control room and broadcast-quality recording capabilities to support professional production and global dissemination. The upgrade includes advanced keyboard instruments, notably a Steinway Spirio piano – the world's finest high-resolution player piano capable of live performance capture and playback – expanding opportunities for networked and remote performance.
The Creative Research Capability investment is important to us to enable innovation in our practice-based research and music technology and expand partnerships between Arts and Computer Science in new uses of AI and immersive technologies and virtual and augmented reality."
New flexible, public-facing research and performance spaces will enable amplified, immersive and interdisciplinary work across music, film, theatre and mixed realities, supported by infrastructure for interactive installations and public engagement research. Enhanced digital connectivity, with embedded streaming capacity, will further facilitate global collaboration and innovative networked performance.
These developments will significantly expand the Department's professional-level recording, broadcast, streaming, and networked performance capabilities, positioning it as a national leader in immersive and interdisciplinary practice-based research.
We are excited by the potential of this new research capability. Music lead important regional partnerships with performers and venues and are at the forefront of our ethos of engaged Arts."
Allan Sudlow, AHRC's Director of Partnerships and Engagement, added: "AHRC's investment will unlock new immersive and interdisciplinary music research, building on Nottingham's outstanding strengths in innovation and performance. Music sits at the heart of the UK's creative industries, and this funding will harness AI, augmented and virtual reality, and immersive technologies to drive the next wave of musical innovation. By combining creativity with advanced digital and communication technologies, this investment will help shape the UK's creative and cultural economy and inspire the audiences of tomorrow."
The investment will also support the Department's flagship partnership with the BBC Concert Orchestra – recently extended for a further three years to September 2029 – while strengthening collaborations with regional arts organisations and music hubs. The interdisciplinary engagement across the arts, sciences, creative industries, and digital research clusters, will drive innovation across the creative and cultural sector.
By transforming existing spaces into technologically advanced, flexible research environments, the Department of Music intends to enable new forms of artistic inquiry, collaborative scholarship, and public engagement, while nurturing the next generation of arts research leaders.
