The ARCO Project was founded in 2015 by Dr Louise Lansdown, then Head of Strings at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) along with staff and students from the strings department. ARCO has evolved over the past nine years, and now boasts two projects, based in South Africa and India. The inaugural project, ARCO Soweto started as a cross-continental online string teaching project between RBC and the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music, Soweto, South Africa, and in 2021 ARCO India was formalised, seeing RBC collaborate with the A.R Rahman Foundation and the Sunshine Orchestra based in Chennai. A new venture, ARCO Prince Albert has recently begun in collaboration with the Prince Albert Community Trust (PACT). ARCO has moved its UK base to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 2023 where it is embedded as an academic elective in both the undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The RNCM are supporting ARCO Teaching and Learning Manager Elliot Tingley to work with RNCM student teachers. Elliot is currently in Prince Albert setting up and running the new ARCO Project.
