South African-born Randall Whittaker studied music at conservatoires in South Africa, the Netherlands and Czechia, where he was a student of the renowned conductor Vladimír Válek. He has over 20 years of experience in specialist creative higher education, leading significant organisational change and transformation projects. He worked closely with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education to advance leadership in specialist institutions. He has held positions at South Africa, the Netherlands, and UK specialist institutions. He is known for his work on representation and frequently writes and presents on the topic.
Professor Whittaker is a Board member of AdvanceHE, serving as a member of the AdvanceHE Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, and member of the Guild of Freemen of the City of London. He has contributed to the activities of several specialist institutions acting in an external or non-executive director capacity; these have recently included the Utrecht School of the Arts, the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Christie’s Education, and BIMM Music Institute.
6 pieces
Newest first, since April 2014
· Comment
National productivity and wellbeing is the output of our creative capacity
Creative degrees may not attract the largest graduate salaries, but you can’t achieve critical national priorities without creative skills. Randall Whittaker and Stephen Farrier make the case for investment in creativity
With Stephen Farrier
· Comment
Creative higher education isn’t a skills pipeline, it’s a cultural force
Randall Whittaker and Stephen Farrier urge resistance to limiting ideas about the relationship between creative education and the creative industries
With Stephen Farrier
· Comment
Curtain call on traditional time-intensive drama training
Randall Whittaker and Stephen Farrier argue for a better model for dramatic arts education – one that acknowledges the competing cost and time pressures on students
With Stephen Farrier
· Comment
What have we done? How not to be complicit in racism
In the wake of worldwide #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations, Randall Whittaker calls for structural change fuelled by lived experience.
· Comment
Social mobility cannot be divorced from inequality
Randall Whittaker on social mobility in HE, arguing that without a refocus on inequality, we should give up on achieving upward social mobility, and entirely revise expectations on the role that higher education has to p
· People
Diversity at the top
As student populations have diversified, progress has not been matched in leadership and management across UK higher education. Randall Whittaker looks at the dire state of diversity at the very top, shares some shocking