JMU Summer in London
Our Creative Director, Julian Knight, was honoured to be awarded a Fulbright Scholar in Residence position by the US State Department, and spent the spring semester 2024 at James Madison University (JMU) in Virginia promoting arts collaborations across the university. A number of ongoing cross-Atlantic collaborations have resulted, including:
Summer in London
In the summer 2025 Creative Futures hosted 6 students from the JMU College of Visual and Performing Arts in London for the month of June. The students were placed with host organisations from London’s thriving performing arts and arts education scene, where they spent approximately 3 days per week volunteering. Our hosts were Ealing Music Service, Tri-borough Music Hub, Music Masters, Opera Holland Park, CoMA, Rambert School of Dance, and Courtauld Gallery. The students engaged in a range of activities including cataloguing music collections and digital art collections, helping plan events and performances (including Ealing Music Service’s massed children’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall), assisting with school outreach projects and workshops, collecting evaluations and surveys, assisting with marketing and promotion, supervising auditions, and project management.
Our hosts were delighted with the students’ input to their organisations, and praised their professionalism, courtesy and engagement.
“E. was a delight to have around. She was punctual, reliable, worked hard, was open to learning and asked brilliant questions.”
The students also had very positive experiences with their respective organisations and exploring London, which helped them build independence, professional skills and confidence:
“This experience helped me develop many skills that will be so useful in the professional world.”
“I was constantly learning and growing not just as a musician but as a person.”
If you would be interested in hosting JMU students for a month (usually June) in the future, please contact us.