Lectures

 

Co-creating opera

A human rights approach to music inclusion

The Enlightenment divide European culture into the Fine Arts and the rest. The first category—originally music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry and architecture—has been protectively updated, so it now embraces some photography and jazz, but the class division persists. From it comes two alternative visions of culture in society: one top down and educative, the other bottom-up and emancipatory. They have existed since the 19th century but their most recent names are cultural democratisation and cultural democracy. Their alternative visions remain conflicted and unresolved, contributing to a depoliticised cultural policy and a sector that speaks of transformation while operating in stasis.
If there is a way forward it lies it taking seriously Article 27 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts. A human rights basis for cultural policy and action might look very different from the current system’s paternalism. One of its expressions is co-creation, in which professional and non-professional artists co-operate as equals—a process that in 2022 led to the performance of three new operas as part of the Traction project. The talk will use this experience as a case study to highlight both the need for a fundamental rethinking of existing approaches to cultural policy (and music mediation in particular) and the innovative artistic landscape such a rethinking allows. www.co-art.eu 

François Matarasso

François Matarasso (France/UK) is a community artist, writer and researcher. His 1997 report, ‘Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the arts’, established influential concepts in cultural policy, and his subsequent work has been widely published and translated. He has worked for foundations, cultural institutions and public bodies in about 40 countries; he has been a trustee of NESTA, Arts Council England and the Baring Foundation and has held honorary professorships in the UK and Australia. Between 2011 and 2015 he worked on undervalued areas of cultural life under the collective title ‘Regular Marvels’. His latest book “A Restless Art – How participation won and why it matters”, was published in 2019. He is a partner in Traction (2020-22) which is researching how technology can support opera co-creation and social inclusion.

 

 

Change of perspective as a possible starting point for social transformation?

Relevance and design of musical encounters with delinquent and/or at-risk youths.

If music mediation is considered to have social-transformative potential, it must relate to society: it should initiate encounters between people with different biographical, social, and cultural backgrounds whose paths would otherwise possibly not cross. This paper discusses the social-transformational potential that music mediation can develop in juvenile detention centers and prisons. Since music projects are already offered here in different ways and dimensions, the article provides insights into these activities, including its framework and specifics of the context and target group. It discusses the extent to which such experiences leave traces not only on the detained young people, but on all those people involved in the music activities, which at best can have socially transformative effects. In this way, encounters between the people involved in the music offerings can stimulate valuable changes of perspective and, along with this, the critical questioning and correction of one's own convictions and patterns of action.

Annette Ziegenmeyer

Annette Ziegenmeyer is Professor of Music Education at the University of Music Luebeck where she also directs the Center for Teacher Education. Her main areas of work and research include composition pedagogy (international perspective), community music and music in prisons. Beyond her active participation in music teacher education networks (for example Allianz für Lehrkräftebildung, Schleswig-Holstein; Kompetenzzentrum für musikalische Bildung, Schleswig-Holstein; Bundesverband Musikunterricht e.V., Schleswig-Holstein) she also co-edits the journal Diskussion Musikpädagogik. 

Julia Peters

The violinist Julia Peters completed her music studies at the HfMT Hamburg and at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. Already at the beginning of her studies she decided to focus on instrumental education and followed an invitation to South Africa in 2002, where she taught children and young people in the townships of Cape Town and Johannesburg as part of the International Classical Music Festival. Shortly after, she accepted an invitation from the "Fundaciòn Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles" to Chile. Her instrumental educational work there included rehearsals with twelve different youth orchestras as well as the conception and direction of didactic seminars for instrumental educators. Back in Germany, she was a lecturer at the music school and the academy of the Hamburg Conservatory from 2005 - 2009 before moving to the Birklehof boarding school in the Black Forest as a lecturer for violin and chamber music. In 2019, Julia Peters started as a research assistant at the HfM Detmold in the Network of Music Universities. She continued her work in this project in 2020 at the University of Music Lübeck, where she holds the staff position for quality management and study program development. During this time, she also completed a part-time master's degree in "Higher Education and Science Management" and advises teachers on issues such as strategic curriculum development.

 

 

Othering-Mechanismen vs. Empowerment  

Othering Mechanisms vs. Empowerment – Toward a Decolonial Agency in Musikvermittlung? 

Musikvermittlung creates "diverse relationships between people and music" and is typically "designed for special dialogue groups" (Petri Preis & Voit, forthcoming). In the meantime, the concept of the dialogue group seems to have prevailed over that of the more monodirectional target group, in order to e.g. to take into account the negotiation processes in music communication contexts. This is still about the definition and inclusion of (heterogeneous) groups (cf. Schippling & Voit, forthcoming). In my paper, the social and cultural epistemological foundations of various group concepts are outlined, their potential connection with social inequalities and current social developments as well as efforts towards empowerment in the cultural field are discussed. These decolonial approaches, which focus on individual and collective agency, and their possible significance for the practice of Musikvermittlung form a concluding outlook.

Lisa Gaupp

Lisa Gaupp is Professor of Cultural Institutions Studies at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She studied Cultural Studies and Intercultural & International Studies in Lüneburg and Barcelona and received her PhD in ethnomusicology from the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. At the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, she held the professorship in Sociology of Culture and was habilitated in Sociology of Culture and the Arts. Her research has been supported by numerous grants, and her publications have received several awards. Lisa Gaupp has lived in the USA, Guatemala, Haiti and Spain, was the Organizing Director of the International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition of the Foundation of Lower Saxony in Hannover in 2009, and has three children.

 

 

Artistic Citzenship: Who gets to participate?

How does the concept of citizenship relate to the arts, arts education and cultural production? Who gets to participate in a music practice, and who gets to decide? What purposes and contexts can music-making serve? Can music-making be a mediator for the processes of negotiation between individuals' musical experiences and larger socio-cultural relations or similar ways of civic engagement? Can hegemonic discourses that result from asymmetrical power relationships in our approaches to art, artistry, citizenship, and even the educational institutions that reproduce, and thus reify, these concepts be challenged?
Elliot, Silverman and Bowman (2016) suggest that the concept of artistic citizenship captures how artistry connects to “civic–social–humanistic–emancipatory responsibilities, obligations to engage in art making that advances social “goods” (8). In this talk various approaches to “arts/artists/artistry” and “citizen/citizenship,” and the implications of the compound term “artistic citizenship” will be explored. One point of departure is that the concept of citizenship can be understood as process, not a position; a practice rather than a status if we follow Tully (2014) in considering citizenship “as negotiated practices, as praxis—as actors and activities in contexts” (35) through which individuals and communities may claim meaningful forms of citizenship through sustained collective engagement. These collaborative practices hold true in the context of artistic communities as well, and the arts may provide such opportunities to redefine and rehearse this richer understanding of citizenship, whether through performance or broader forms of participation, similar to Small’s (1998) definition of musicking.

Maria Westvall

Maria Westvall is Professor of Music education at Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research focuses on music education in a broad perspective, including aspects of intercultural approaches, community music, popular music, and migration and she has directed several research projects on these topics. Maria has presented her research in a number of international contexts, and has been published in books and scientific journals, including Music Education Research, British Journal of Music Education, Journal of Music Teacher Education, International Journal of Community Music, Música em perspectiva, El oído pensante, Intercultural Education, Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, Nordic Research in Music Education, Danish Musicology Online, and the Finnish Journal of Music Education. She is currently the director of Copenhagen Centre for Research in Artistic Citizenship (CReArC)

 

 

Transforming higher music education

Systems learning through counternarratives of Finnish socially engaged musicians

Participatory, social-relational music-making is a growing field in music education, dealing with topics ranging from socially engaged, responsible, and impactful music making to artistic citizenship and musicians’ engagements with civic missions in society. These practices are typically positioned lower in the hierarchy of higher music education, and are considered less prestigious than established concert hall practices. However, research has shown that socially engaged music-making can be highly values-driven, as well as personally and artistically rewarding and educative for the musicians themselves.  
This chapter explores the changes effected by social-relational practices on the practitioners’ self-reported conceptions of music and musicianship. Interviews of twelve musicians in the Finnish context, all with higher music education degrees and experience in socially engaged practices, will be examined. The findings show that the musicians constructed their accounts as counternarratives that reveal their critical awareness of elitism, unhealthy competition, exclusion, and hierarchies, manifested in overly narrow musical specialization from focusing on a single instrument and genre, a lack of improvisation, and control-oriented performance practices. For the interviewees, the relational work required unlearning previous attitudes, beliefs, and conventions, and repositioning themselves towards diversity and difference, as well as recognising a plurality of criteria for quality in human musical relationships. The socially-transformative positive potential of relational music-making is highlighted, not only from the perspective of the participants but also from that of the professional musicians. 
Conceptually, the analysis relates ‘systems awareness' to ‘social-relational’ and ‘socio-political aesthetics’. We argue that socially engaged musicians’ work can encourage critical ‘systems learning’ that can in turn enable the professional field to open its gaze beyond tradition, musical genre, and learned mental models and towards transforming higher music education and society at large. The study is part of a larger UK-funded project, Music for Social Impact: practitioners' contexts, work, and beliefs, in which musicians from the UK, Belgium, Columbia, and Finland were investigated. 

Heidi Westerlund

Heidi Westerlund has worked as a professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland since 2004, where she is responsible for music education doctoral studies. She has also been appointed as an Adjunct Professor (Research) in Monash University in 2021–23. Her research interests include higher arts education, music teacher education, collaborative learning, cultural diversity and democracy in music education. She has published widely in international journals and books, and she is the Editor-in-chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education. She is the co-editor of for instance Collaborative learning in higher music education (2013, Ashgate), Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education (2020, Springer), Politics of Diversity in Music Education (2021, Springer), and Expanding Professionalism in Music and Higher Music Education – A Changing Game (2021, Routledge). She is currently the lead-PI of Music Education, Professionalism, and Eco-Politics (EcoPolitics, 2021-25) funded by the Academy of Finland and the Co-PI in Music for social impact: practitioners' contexts, work, and beliefs (2020-22), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK.

Sari Karttunen

Sari Karttunen, Doctor of Social Sciences, works as a University Researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki and Senior Researcher at the Center for Cultural Policy Research CUPORE. She also holds the position of Adjunct Professor in cultural policy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specialises in the sociology of artistic occupations and the construction and criticism of cultural statistics and other knowledge bases for cultural policy. Her current interests include the practice of community art and the feminisation of artistic jobs. She served as the co-coordinator for the Research Network Sociology of the Arts of the European Sociological Association in 2017-19 and as the coordinator in 2019-21.