Staff & Teaching

The principal lecturer at the Chapel Violins School of Violin Making is John Gosling.

John originally graduated from the Newark Violin Making College and has spent many years running a thriving violin making and restoration business which has enjoyed long standing growth and success through customers’ recommendations. In addition, John is a qualified lecturer who teaches at the Newark Violin Making College.

The Chapel Violins School of Violin Making has strong links in the professional violin making community and we are also members of the British Violin Making Association (BVMA), where John is a member of the committee. Through these connections we have been fortunate to be able to arrange for specialist violin makers to present seminars on their subject of expertise as a regular part of our teaching curriculum.

These have included:

Peter Goodfellow - Silver Medallist at the 2009 Cremona Violin Making Competition

John Topham - Committee member of the BVMA and specialist in the Dendrochronology of Violins

To create a constructive and supportive educational environment the learning is provided through a number of methods;

- Class demonstrations and discussions form a major part of our education process. We have also employed modern technology to project these demonstrations so that all students can easily observe the teaching.
- Each student receives a significant proportion of individual tuition on a daily basis where progress is discussed and collaboratively assessed with the lecturer and any required demonstrations are provided on a one-to-one basis.
This ongoing evaluation is supported by regular informal one-to-one tutorials.
- Lectures and seminars on specific subjects are provided by the principal lecturers and visiting specialists (as mentioned) to provide focus on particularly interesting and important aspects of violin making and restoration.
- We facilitate personal research by providing laptops with internet access and a quiet study area where there is a library of violin making reference books and journals.
- For further research, and for a broader experience of the violin making industry, we organise group excursions to places of note such as museums, instrument collections and auctions.