Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts

I lived with 8 LIPA students last year and dealt directly with the institute in helping to set up and promote performances across the city!
I must say, this place breeds talent on a huge scale and I’d never lived amongst such a great group of people before. What’s more is they all spoke highly of LIPA and all that it has to offer.
LIPA has a huge success rate and many affiliations across the performance industry. It offers classes in singer/​song writing, music management, performance, community performance, dance, acting and a wealth of interlinked modules.
It’s an expensive place to study and can be a hard place to get into due to the amount of applications that the institute receives each year.
But it’s a great place, a really sound place (Excuse the pun). LIPA students have a great social community and I was proud to be a part of it as I met some fantastic and talented people from all corners of the globe!

From the outside, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts looks like an impressive Georgian building that is home to important academics. In actual fact, it’s an all singing, all dancing facility where students are encouraged to live out their Glee and Fame fantasies!
Built in 1825, the building was originally used as a school for boys with past students including Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Hearing the building was empty and neglected in the late eighties, McCartney joined forces with entepeneur and Brit School founder Mark Featherstone-​Witty to regenerate and re-​open the building as a higher education facility for creatives. After a seven year struggle and mulit-​million pound investment, the doors open in 1996 offering students diplomas, degrees and post-​graduate programmes in everything from Performing Arts, Music, Dance and Sound Technology to Entertainment Management and Theatre and Performance Design.
I’ve never studied at LIPA personally but if I was in my teens, I might aspire to. Alongside regular classes, there are masterclasses and Q&A sessions with industry veterans and musicians. Previous guests have included Trevor Horn, Malcolm McClaren, Antony H. Wilson, Alan McGee, Cathy Dennis and Will Young.

A daughter spent a very happy and informative 2 years here. Full marks.

Otherwise known as LIPA, this is Liverpool’s fame school. It has produced some famous acts such as Sandi Thom, The Zutons and The Wombats and there are all sorts of courses and shows running. They offer tickets for the public to come and see the shows and this is a great chance to see some up and coming talent. They also do Short courses for adults, summer courses and weekends both for children on top of the usual degrees and diplomas. The facilities are state of the art, as are the educational resources and contacts available.