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A new year-long festival will encourage artists and audiences to view their cities through the eyes of their homeless residents.

Streetwise Opera will commission nine composers, three choreographers, three designers and a filmmaker to work with more than 200 people who have been homeless for the festival, titled Re:sound. 

Working in London, Nottingham and Manchester, they aim to co-create nine micro-operas to be performed in March 2023.

The charity is partnering with organisations that address homelessness to expand its reach and create connections between artists and participants. Six of the operas will be written and composed in hostels and day centres.

“Staying creative is very important when you are recovering from homelessness, because it lightens your heart and inspires you to achieve more,” said Denise Alison, a participant in weekly workshops run by Streetwise Opera at the Southbank Centre. 

Streetwise’s Artistic Director Martin Constantine said the participating artists have “the ambition to reimagine the boundaries of opera and co-create work that aims to invite audiences, especially those who may think that opera is not for them, to rediscover their cities through a different lens”.

University of the Arts London (UAL) will offer 30 online and "low residency" degree courses in the 2022/23 academic year.

The plan, part of the university's new 10-year strategy, could double student numbers, providing another 5,000 full-time equivalent places per year, or up to 15,000 part-time students.

It will invest in its online infrastructure to achieve this.

"By growing student numbers here in London and expanding online, we can provide more students, whoever, or wherever they may be, with a high-quality creative education," the strategy reads.

"Our strategy will deliver quality at scale, so that we are defined not by how many students we exclude, but by how many we include."

The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) is making its first round of acting auditions free.

The school is also making all first round auditions self-taped, having moved auditions online during Covid-19. 

“We found that asking for a self-tape submission last year enabled us to meet a number of individuals we wouldn’t otherwise have connected with, and I think that’s reflected in the makeup of this year’s first years,” said Head of Acting Will Hammond.

Fees for second round in-person auditions and in-person dance auditions are being reduced from £40 to £30.

LIPA says the changes are reflect efforts to increase access and diversity. 

It will continue to offer audition fee waivers and travel grants to applicants who come from areas of the country with lower rates of higher education uptake.