The UK’s first professional symphony orchestra cooperative: social enterprise?

This conference paper reports the results of the first phase of a three phase longitudinal research study designed to examine the initiation and development of the UK‟s first professional symphony orchestra cooperative. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty six professional musicians from a "pool" of forty plus musicians. This "pool" of musicians provides the cooperative with a resource that can be drawn on to form an orchestra to rehearse for and perform concerts and recordings. Preliminary results reveal four themes that emerged from the semi-structured interview data. These themes were interpreted by the researchers as: "commitment", "democracy", "social mission" and "aesthetic aspirations". The themes are presented along with supporting quotations from the interview data that illustrate the characteristics of these four emergent themes. The implications of the themes are then discussed within the context of the prior literature reviewed