The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) is the only higher education institution started from scratch in living memory. This wasn't the intention of the two founders, Mark Featherstone-Witty (the Principal) and Sir Paul McCartney.
Mark's enduring concern was devising a curriculum that would enhance sustained employment in the performing arts. Paul wanted to save his old school building and do something for disengaged Liverpool youth.
Using the ideas that lead to Mark's first creation (The BRIT School in London), LIPA delivers an integrated curriculum for the main performing and making performance possible skills.
The most recent figures for graduates three years after leaving show that 91% are in work, many having started small businesses – another integrated strand of the curriculum.