Academy of Music & Theatre Arts: Research & Knowledge Exchange

The Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA) is a centre for research and education in studio production and performing arts, based in Cornwall. We operate as a connective and empowering node within the Cornish Music and Theatre Arts cultures and economies, supporting research and knowledge exchange between academics, artists, students, and the wider community.  

Through experimental practice, critical enquiry and innovative methods, we engage with entangled ecologies, embodied and mediated experience, and the stories that shape realities – undertaking research and making art that reimagines inter-relationality, how we live, learn, relate, communicate and create.  

Across the breadth of our diverse theoretical and practice led approaches, our focus is on the primacy of nurturing imaginations, systems understanding and interventions, utilising technologies, connecting with others, and finding affective ways to articulate the value of our artforms as that which tells stories, creates meaning, prompts questions and moves people to feel and respond.  

We aim to make positive educational, economic, environmental and cultural impact within the vibrant creative cultural ecology in Cornwall, ensuring that excellence in Sound, Music, Dance and Theatre Arts, as developed in a rural Celtic region, is supported at a local and grassroots level as well as represented nationally and internationally.

Our four thematic areas are:

• Creative Pedagogy and Professional Practice 
• Building Better Worlds
• Dark Ecologies
• Immersive Storytelling and Technological Transmutation