VIDEO: "If we are removed from this building, there will be no conservatory at all": a petition has started

A petition has been launched at the Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan. The faculty and students are against the conservatory being part of an academic city, moving, or merging with another university.

“If we are removed from this building, there will be no conservatory at all because relocating us to another place is very difficult; it will not be the same at all. If it is elsewhere, it will turn into an ordinary music school,” said Anna Mayilyan, a conservatory lecturer, singer, and Honored Artist of Armenia, in a conversation with Sputnik Armenia.

She has also organized an online petition against the decision of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports on the change.org platform. The singer expressed her happiness that the entire staff has united to fight for the conservatory's building not to serve another purpose.

“This building needs support, renovation, and improvement, not to create something else and send us to who knows where,” Mayilyan stated.

She is firmly opposed to the merging of institutions with a cultural orientation, deeming the decision wrong, asserting that a music institution cannot merge with another university. She emphasized that when the city was being built a long time ago, it was done very intelligently—with the Philharmonic concert hall and Sayat Nova School just a few steps away from the conservatory, as well as other universities being close.

“This means that it was already wisely arranged, although we have not addressed this issue before, and there has not been an opinion,” the singer noted.

She has doubts that this issue related to universities was artificially brought to the agenda because there are more important issues that distract people from the main problems.

Regarding rumors that the building has already been sold, Mayilyan insisted that they should demand a document from the state, a confirmation that such a thing is not the case.

The chairman of the conservatory's student council, Narek Khachatryan, stated in our conversation that besides the petition, they will also send a letter to Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan, with arguments about why the universitycannot be part of the academic city, and what alternative solutions they suggest.

“For example, we could have a music faculty in the academic city, create a separate school; that would be our contribution, but we cannot move the conservatory,” Khachatryan said.

He emphasized that the acoustics of every classroom in this building has been calculated. Regarding rumors about the building being sold, Khachatryan stated that it is not the first time such reports have circulated. He mentioned that he met with the assistant of the renovation project leader and discussed it, assuring that the building definitely cannot be adapted as a hotel.