Preparing professional performers: music students’ perceptions and experiences of the learning process at Birmingham Conservatoire

Students at a musical conservatory in Britain develop ideas of musical success or failure through using notions of ‘talent’ and ‘hard work’. Mature, working‐class and younger, middle‐class students utilize these notions differently. The latter maintain that innate capacities determine success while the former believe that social factors are also important. Conservatoire education may leave both unprepared for a professional world with fewer job possibilities and shrinking government support for the arts.