The European music profession is rapidly changing and suggests more flexible career patterns and a need for transferable skills and lifelong learning strategies. Musicians collaborate increasingly with practitioners in other arts and societal cross-sector settings. This reality holds challenges and implications for higher music education (Smilde 2009). This state of play was point of departure in 2006 for the development of the collaborative European master ‘New Audiences and Innovative Practice’ (NAIP) by five European conservatoires. Five schools, from Iceland, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland, devised an innovative two-year master programme, helping students to develop and lead creative projects in diverse artistic, community and cross-sectoral settings, thereby creating new audiences and developing their leadership skills in varied artistic and social contexts. The programme aims to provide future professional musicians with the skills and knowledge to become artistically flexible practitioners able to adjust to new contexts within a wide range of situations of societal relevance. This particular chapter entails a case study of the first summer school of this programme which took place in Iceland. It details the heart of the programme, the artistic laboratory and reflective practice.
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This field report examines initiatives in music lifelong learning through the research network Lifelong Learning in Music (LLM) of the Prince Claus Conservatoire in the Netherlands. LLM collaborates with other schools on various projects. As well, there is an innovative masters programme ‘New audiences and innovative practices’ with a variety of partners.
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A musical improvisation inspired by a beautifulsummer day or by a song by Elvis; for patientsadmitted in hospital for an operation, music canhave healing powers. With the research projectMeaningful Music in Health Care (MiMiC), thattook place from autumn 2015 until 2018, the researchgroup Lifelong Learning in Music (LLM), togetherwith the department of surgery of the UniversityMedical Center Groningen (UMCG), researched thepractice of live music for hospital patients and theirhealth care professionals. For the research groupLifelong Learning in Music the focus of the researchwas on the meaning of this musical practice formusicians and health care professionals, and onthe development of this practice.The research of UMCG concentrated on the effectsof live music on the recovery and wellbeing of patients
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Since 2015, the research group Lifelong Learning in Music of Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, together with the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), has developed and researched the MiMiC practice for patients and nurses on surgical wards. The musicians make tailor-made music in the patients' rooms in collaboration with patients and nurses. They do this on the basis of verbal and non-verbal contact with patients and nurses. Person-centred music-making turns out to be easy to realise in a medical setting and to be meaningful for all involved. People who have just had surgery experience less pain. Nurses feel more deeply involved with their patients. Musicians show sensitivity for the social context in which they carry out their artistic practice.In this project the research group is developing an innovative artistic practice with a focus on elderly patients. Musicians work with patients and the care staff that are taking care of these patients during their stay in hospital. The research should lead to insights in the effects of this practice and to a new training for master students and professional musicians who want wish to specialise themselves in this field. Pilots on six different wards of the UMCG with professional musicians and master students are part of the research which will last two years in its entirety. The project has been granted funding from the 'Banning de Jong Fonds' of the national 'Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds' and the 'Fonds Sluyterman van Loo'.
Recomposing E-Waste introduces circular strategies to sound artists and designers working with digital music instruments (DMIs) such as desktop synthesizers, small keyboards and controllers, and experimental hardware and software for sound art and music production. It explores and documents the re-purposing of obsolete smartphones, transforming them into fully working DMIs that can be used to create new sound works and music. The target groups are artists, designers and musicians working with sound and digital technology who are looking for ways to reinvent their practice in sustainable ways, depending less on the latest ICT equipment. The research is designed to address the goal number 3, “Extending product life”, of the National Circular Economy Programme 2023-2030 (Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management 2023). Waag Futurelab and Willem de Kooning Academy (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, RUAS) will collaborate with Codarts University of the Arts, postmarketOS, Fairphone, ThePhoneLab and FIBER Foundation to develop a prototype DMI made entirely from obsolete smartphones and other repurposed materials. The DMI will be used to teach, validate and disseminate innovative artistic and design research strategies that provide cultural practitioners with training in digital tools, know-how, and a conceptual framework to combine creativity with circularity. It will exemplify how to increase the functional lifespan of mobile devices through reverse-engineering and repurposing, reducing thereby the resource use and waste that often accompanies digital cultural production. The outcomes of the research will equip creatives with practical strategies to resist planned obsolescence, the market strategy the ICT industry deploys to increase the sales of newer devices and make still-working hardware seemingly useless. This will enable artists to play a guiding role in reshaping our society’s relationship with digital devices, not only on a symbolic but also on a functional and material level.
