Preparing global-ready and interculturally competent graduates for the music and entertainment industries

This paper investigates the impact of an international study tour abroad on Australian music and entertainment students. The study focuses on how an international music industry project impacts international, global, and intercultural perspectives of the student, and facilitates professional growth and personal development. Over the last ten years, researchers have studied music industry environments to assess the skills and knowledges required of graduates to transition into successful careers. These include emotional, social, intellectual and musical competence ( Chase & Hatschek, 2019), and the ability to interpret the nuances of the industry, to be collaborative, productive and adaptive (Bruenger, 2015). Prior to the digital era, higher education’s role was to prepare graduates for the local and regional economies, but now with a click of a mouse, the local workforce has become global. The focus in education has now shifted to preparing students to vie competitively in the global marketplace, thus preparing global-ready graduates who are flexible, adaptive and interculturally competent people. The higher education sector’s ‘internationalisation’ agenda recognizes that globally focused experiences and literacies are central to developing culturally competent professionals, capable of operating in diverse communities and environments. According to Goldstein et al. (2006) students are demanding study abroad that offers greater scope for exploring broader international career possibilities. While HE music and entertainment courses are acknowledging the shifting requirements for graduates entering creative careers, (the development of both professional and intercultural competencies), there are few empirical studies offering international, project-based learning, which address the gap for how to build international processes into the curriculum. This study follows an engagement project between QUT (Brisbane, Australia) and the KM Music Conservatory (Chennai, India) since 2015. The project combines tertiary, industry, production, and a delivery model that plugs students directly into industry and exposes them to diversity and real-world learning in diverse intercultural environments. The project takes place in Chennai for two weeks each year. It generates new songs through Australian-Indian collaboration, focuses local, national and international attention on the music of emerging artists, and feeds into entrepreneurial pedagogies. Australian and Indian students have the opportunity to develop skills in areas such as event management, marketing and promotion, administration, recording, performance, song writing, and production. While this model has professional music making practice at its centre and produces tangible and commercial products, this particular paper focuses on the challenges, experiences and outcomes of the project, and investigates what intercultural knowledge, attitudes and skills Australian students develop through their study-abroad experience. Post-travel questionnaires and interviews have been used to understand the experiences of international study, cross-cultural encounters and personal transformative reflection. Our findings suggest that study abroad experiences offering a professional lens as opposed to a tourist lens, provide transformative learning experiences for students. Deep immersion and a short time frame for delivering a successful project, was both confronting and rewarding for students, revealing how they adjusted their perspectives to operate both effectively within themselves and in interaction with others.