The musical landscape in Europe shows a complex picture. Societal change leads to change in the careers of artists. We see an increasing number of unstable jobs in the music profession. It no longer offers many opportunities for full-time, long-term contract work, but is often more project-based, calling on musicians to contribute on a sporadic basis or for specific activities. Many graduates employ themselves as freelance artists.Rarely employed in one job for life, the musician is increasingly an entrepreneur having a portfolio career, comprising simultaneous or successive, brief or part-time periods of employment in different areas of the music profession. Having a portfolio career does not mean that a musician is not employable; rather this reality reflects societal change and also creates, sometimes exciting, challenges. Exact figures of musicians holding a portfolio career are not known. We may assume that the increase of portfolio careers is substantial through contacts held with alumni and alumni research carried out by a number of European conservatories.Holding a portfolio career with overlapping activities in the broad professionalpractice requires the musician to have many roles at the same time
DOCUMENT
The European thematic network “Polifonia” was developed between 2004 and 2007 and was initiated and coordinated by the European Association of Conservatories (AEC). Within this project four working groups were engaged with the Tuning process (issues of transparency within the Bologna process), pre-college education, the third cycle (doctorate programmes) and “Trends and changes in the European music profession”. The reflections below were given during the annual conference of the AEC, which took place in Strasbourg, France, in November 2007. During this conference the outcomes of the Polifonia project were presented by the chairs of the working group. Rineke Smilde, co-chair of the working group on the Profession, gave on this occasion a qualitative portrait of the trends and changes in the current music profession, as one of the outcomes of the working group.
MULTIFILE
Seeing improvisation as something that really needs its place in conservatoire training and education may be more or less ‘new’. However improvisation itself is of course not at all new and has existed since as long as we can remember. I will not go into that any further, it would take not a single address but a symposium of at least two weeks.
DOCUMENT
The concept of lifelong learning refers to the several skills able to provide forneeds of music graduates. Such as it occurs with other areas, the domain ofmusic is in constant modification, either for the incorporation of new technologies, either had the cultural demands or for the multiplicity of activities that music has accumulated. Observing the deficits in the formation of the students, the lifelong learning appears as an alternative to enable the acquisition of tools which improve continuously the professional. The lifelong learning includes a new notion of knowledge that brings together the formal, non-formal and informal teaching, making possible experiences of knowledge objective and practical, as a way to consider the several challenges that appear to the profession. To hold the lifelong learning in the Music Colleges as an objective many changes are requested, and all the structures of the Music Colleges must be engaged.
MULTIFILE
This article presents and discusses an extracurricular, co-constructed programme: “The Catalyst Club” as a form of Artistic Educational Commoning (AEC). Having been developed as part of a PhD research at Minerva Art Academy (Groningen, TheNetherlands), The Catalyst Club (TCC) explored new perspectives on the education of artists and designers in a globalized world and created alternative modes of operating in higher art education. It brought together students, alumni, teachers from a range of disciplines, and external participants. During developing TCC, the author occupied a dual role as researcher and participant, working together with others in an artistic co-creative process. TCC drew on and developed the methods relating to Collaborative Autoethnography, Participatory Action Research and Artistic Research. This study presents AEC as a communal effort to build spaces for learning and experimentation. They are created through interaction and cooperation, based on social relations and the production of shared values. As such it can offer a counterbalance to the extensive individualisation, instrumentalization, and commodification of communities in higher art education. The article formulates some recommendations on how AEC can reconnect the education of artists and designers with the role of the arts in wider technological, societal, and political contexts.
DOCUMENT
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to study the activation of cerebral motor networks during auditory perception of music in professional keyboard musicians (n=12). The activation paradigm implied that subjects listened to two-part polyphonic music, while either critically appraising the performance or imagining they were performing themselves. Two-part polyphonic audition and bimanual motor imagery circumvented a hemisphere bias associated with the convention of playing the melody with the right hand. Both tasks activated ventral premotor and auditory cortices, bilaterally, and the right anterior parietal cortex, when contrasted to 12 musically unskilled controls. Although left ventral premotor activation was increased during imagery (compared to judgment), bilateral dorsal premotor and right posterior-superior parietal activations were quite unique to motor imagery. The latter suggests that musicians not only recruited their manual motor repertoire but also performed a spatial transformation from the vertically perceived pitch axis (high and low sound) to the horizontal axis of the keyboard. Imagery-specific activations in controls were seen in left dorsal parietal-premotor and supplementary motor cortices. Although these activations were less strong compared to musicians, this overlapping distribution indicated the recruitment of a general 'mirror-neuron' circuitry. These two levels of sensori-motor transformations point towards common principles by which the brain organizes audition-driven music performance and visually guided task performance.
DOCUMENT
With this “invitation for action”, the Diversity, Inclusion & Gender Equality (DIGE) Working Group of the AEC - Empowering Artists as Makers in Society project (hereafter, ARTEMIS) welcomes all the AEC member institutions to explore, discuss and implement practices fostering Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in Higher Music Education (HME). We invite our colleagues to collectively dream up possible futures for HME through DEI work, which responds to the need to accommodate the plurality of backgrounds, artistic paradigms, access capabilities, identities and aspirations amongst current as well as future students and staff. Through this publication we wish to encourage the AEC memberinstitutions to grasp this simultaneously evident and complex task and to explore what diversity, equity and inclusion could mean if musicians are seen as “makers in, for and of society” (Gaunt et al. 2021). For us as a Working Group, this proactive view has been central to our work from the beginning, as we asked ourselves whether HME institutions find themselves predominantly adapting (or not) to inevitable local and global changes and pressures, and whether the HMEinstitutions could see themselves as part of a network of change makers in society. Focusing on the latter, we see DEI work as being directly connected to the core artistic practices of the institutions. As reflections from many of our colleagues in various AEC member institutions illustrate, the commitment to DEI work nurtures artistic imagination, widens pedagogical approaches, and expands the scope of professional practice.
DOCUMENT
In beleidsnotities en publicaties in Nederland komt men de laatste jaren regelmatig de stelling tegen dat van het kunstonderwijs verwacht mag worden dat het haar studenten equipeert op hun toekomstige rol als cultureel ondernemer. Deze publicatie doet verslag van een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen cultureel ondernemerschap en het kunstonderwijs. Allereerst gaat de tekst in op de definitie van cultureel ondernemerschap en op de kwaliteiten ofwel competenties waar een cultureel ondernemer over dient te beschikken. Vervolgens staat de auteur stil bij de (vermeende) risico's van dit fenomeen. Als laatste komt de vraag aan de orde of en hoe het kunstonderwijs aandacht kan besteden aan dit onderwerp. De eindconclusie van dit onderzoek luidt: "Ze kunnen beter als Rapunzel hun vlecht uit het torenraam hangen om Prins Fortuin een handje te helpen dan lijdzaam wachten tot het lot hen gunstig gezind is." Het boek is bedoeld voor studenten en docenten van Kunstvakopleidingen, zoals conservatoria en academies voor beeldende vorming, drama, dans, circus en popmuziek, die meer over het onderwerp cultureel ondernemerschap willen weten. Het is geschreven in opdracht van het lectoraat "Kunstpraktijk in de samenleving" van Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. Studenten en docenten van de verschillende academies leverden naast kunstenaars en cultureel ondernemers een bijdrage in het onderzoek.
MULTIFILE
