Alt-Campus

Melbourne Polytechnic is a creative industries educational precinct in the heart of one of Melbourne's best-known visual and performing arts communities, designed to improve access to creative training and facilities, with a suite of creative industries-focused courses including design, photography, visual arts, professional writing and editing, writing and publishing, digital media, music, theatre arts, theatre, costume design and make-up, and sound production. 

Presenting the VET Music Business programs at the new campus, Sarah-Jane Wentzki comes to teaching from not only recording and performance with experimental duos I Want A Hovercraft and Princess One Point Five, as well as contributing to the odd local feature and short film, but also in the business of music, having worked at Arts Vic and APRA. The last couple of months have seen her help write the new Diploma of Music Business program that she'll be presenting at the new campus.

“The idea of taking over the old Swinburne campus,” Wentzki explains, “is to replicate the cross-platform, cross-disciplinary collaboration happening at our other campuses, where you've got the sound students working with the music business students to create events; to create a student hub that will grow into a thriving, artistic campus that creates opportunities for performances and organic collaborations. It's a great opportunity for us to really reinvent what we're trying to do.

“Of course there are so many music business courses out there, but I think the thing students are looking for nowadays is people to collaborate with and courses that weed out the unnecessary information so they can get a hold of the information immediately relevant to them, giving them the opportunity to meet real industry people and to have access to arts and music organisations that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to have by themselves.

“So the new Diploma we've developed is give students access to guest lecturers who are working musicians who have done really interesting, innovative things, and to arts lawyers who are professionals in arts tax law and that sort of stuff, people students wouldn't ordinarily be able to call up and have free counsel with.

“We want to have a course that is meeting students' needs by being really flexible and so giving them the opportunity to have some crazy idea and go, 'How can I make this work?' to get a Diploma. So we've got some really practical classes in there that are the less 'sexy' small business classes that are more relevant for music and not just straight, dry business, as well as the more creative classes, like publicity and promotion, and developing, say, a really cool Pozible campaign, 'cause crowdfunding is really kind of where it's at, and the pros and cons of crowdfunding and people who've made it work and people who haven't, looking at different case studies of projects that have used that medium to really great effect.

“But also, you know, if you're not quite sure what you want to be doing just yet but you know that you love music and you like doing a couple of things about music, the Diploma is a great way to dip your toe in and get some good practical skills behind you to try and get an internship or start your own music business. Let's face it, no one really knows what they're doing when they start out and it's really cool working at the Polytechnic, or NMIT as we call it now, in that it's a really good, nurturing environment. That's why courses like this are still so relevant.”

Again, as the official website points out, the “key focus [of the Prahran campus] is to establish a creative vibe in the heart of Melbourne's visual and performing arts community whilst delivering world class vocational and higher education”.

Other key performing arts streams on offer at the campus include Certificates III and IV in Music, Certificate IV in Theatre Arts, Certificate IV and Diploma in Sound and the Certificate IV in Digital Media. All Certificate courses have pathways to Diploma level.