Building of the oldest Russia’s theater university’s branch completed in Kemerovo

The building of the Higher School of Music and Dramatic Arts (branch of the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts with Art Industries School) was completed and put into operation in Kemerovo. The building is a part of the cultural cluster to be created by order of the President of Russia. With the RGISI branch commissioned, the construction of the educational part of the cluster is complete.

The building of the Higher School of Music and Dramatic Arts houses a modern transforming theater, an atrium, a spacious co-working area, recreational spaces, and a media library. Students will have at their disposal specialized high-tech studios and laboratories: acting and directing studios, workshops and facilities for staging of performances, a filming pavilion, a sound recording room, a light, video and VR laboratory, a stage movement and dance hall, classrooms for stage speech and vocals, and computer graphics classrooms.

The RGISI’s Siberian campus will open in September. The university educates artists, directors, production designers, cameramen, and other specialists of theater and cinema. In 2022, 84 people from 15 regions of the country entered the Kemerovo branch of RGISI.

The branch also offers additional education programs for children and adults. The flagship project of the branch is the School of Creative Industries, opened in Kemerovo in 2020 for schoolchildren aged 12-17. During their training, they are introduced to up-and-coming technologies in animation, design, sound engineering, electronic music, etc.

"A 240-bed dormitory and a comfort-class apartment building have been built for students and educators of the RGISI branch. All the facilities of the Cultural and Educational Complex are built under customized projects using the most modern technologies and materials, and fully comply with the best international standards. They have everything it takes to make a creative person," said Stroytransgaz CEO Dmitry Lebedev.

The Kemerovo cultural cluster, in addition to the RGISI branch and a dormitory and residential building for educators, will include a museum and theater complex, as well as one more residential building for artists and cluster specialists. The museum and theater complex will house branches of the Russian Museum and the State Academic Mariinsky Theater, and the Kuzbass Center for the Arts. In addition, the following facilities have already been commissioned: museum depository with a restoration centre and cluster’s educational block institutions such as a secondary school with two swimming pools, branches of the Moscow State Choreography Academy and the Central Music School - Academy of Performing Arts.

The cultural and educational complexes are being built in Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, Kemerovo, and Sevastopol, as mandated by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The developer is the National Cultural Heritage Foundation for Social and Cultural Projects (founders are the Hermitage, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theaters), the general contractor is Stroytransgaz Group.