This book has been written for musicians who want to engage with audiences beyond the concert hall and other traditional venues. The study is equally worthwhile for conservatoires and music academies aiming to change the increasingly unrealistic goal of training young musicians solely for the stage. When taking the changing music profession and its market opportunities seriously, higher music education institutions can become aware of creative opportunities for establishing professional music practices in areas in society that are remote from concert halls and big festivals, from public media and stardom, and instead look for settings which reach out to various kinds of audiences. This does not mean, of course, that the results presented here wish to diminish the wonderful gift of being an accomplished soloist or chamber musician, but they would like to show that the role of music can be exhaustive, where artistic connection can bring about strong communication between people. Music can make a difference and be deeply influential, especially in social fields of illness and suffering, weakness and depression. ‘Music and dementia’ is the challenging topic of this book. It is not about educational suggestions to care staff to sing well-known children's songs in care homes for residents with dementia, just to lift the mood. Through engaging in music as a participatory process, its goal is to make the person behind the dementia visible again. The project presented in this study not only shows that this idea can be realised for people with dementia and their caregivers, but it has also opened up learning processes for the musicians involved which nobody would have expected before, nurturing their professional lives and development. The project has changed their understanding of the place of music in people’s lives; it has touched their personality and stimulated deep reflections about their identity. This positive effect should benefit young musicians in their music education. However, musicians are not the only target group. The discoveries of the study are also helpful and inspiring for caregivers of people with dementia and for families of a loved one living with dementia. The book explores the interaction between music and dementia through the stories of people who have been working closely together: three musicians, eight women living with dementia, five caregivers, a staff development practitioner, a project coordinator and three scientific observers. The result is a book in which all of them have participated in their own way. It consists of field observations, reflective journals, conversations, interviews and careful scientific analyses. If it can be read by many people at a profit, the project has worked. There will be, in the words of Clifford Geertz, a 'thick description' of a new friendship between music and dementia, a story about a fascinating practice that will stimulate and bolster committed people.
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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
Non-formal music education is the field of music education outside the regular school curriculum, and delivered by music teachers / music leaders other than the teacher in the classroom. The main body of this research consists of case studies in the Netherlands. In addition there is a number of case studies in other European countries.
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Students in Higher Music Education (HME) are not facilitated to develop both their artistic and academic musical competences. Conservatoires (professional education, or ‘HBO’) traditionally foster the development of musical craftsmanship, while university musicology departments (academic education, or ‘WO’) promote broader perspectives on music’s place in society. All the while, music professionals are increasingly required to combine musical and scholarly knowledge. Indeed, musicianship is more than performance, and musicology more than reflection—a robust musical practice requires people who are versed in both domains. It’s time our education mirrors this blended profession. This proposal entails collaborative projects between a conservatory and a university in two cities where musical performance and musicology equally thrive: Amsterdam (Conservatory and University of Amsterdam) and Utrecht (HKU Utrechts Conservatorium and Utrecht University). Each project will pilot a joint program of study, combining existing modules with newly developed ones. The feasibility of joint degrees will be explored: a combined bachelor’s degree in Amsterdam; and a combined master’s degree in Utrecht. The full innovation process will be translated to a transferable infrastructural model. For 125 students it will fuse praxis-based musical knowledge and skills, practice-led research and academic training. Beyond this, the partners will also use the Comenius funds as a springboard for collaboration between the two cities to enrich their respective BA and MA programs. In the end, the programme will diversify the educational possibilities for students of music in the Netherlands, and thereby increase their professional opportunities in today’s job market.
This project aims to develop a measurement tool to assess the inclusivity of experiences for people with varying challenges and capabilities on the auditory spectrum. In doing so, we performed an in-depth exploration of scientific literature and findings from previous projects by Joint Projects. Based on this, we developed an initial conceptual model that focuses on sensory perception, emotion, cognition, and e[ort in relation to hearing and fatigue. Within, this model a visitor attraction is seen as an “experienscape” with four key elements: content, medium, context, and individual. In co-creative interviews with experts by experience with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum, they provided valuable insights that led to a significant expansion of this initial model. This was a relevant step, as in the scientific and professional literature, little is known about the leisure experiences of people with troubled hearing. For example, personal factors such as a person’s attitude toward their own hearing loss and the social dynamics within their group turned out to greatly influence the experience. The revised model was then applied in a case study at Apenheul, focusing on studying differences in experience of their gorilla presentation amongst people with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum.Societal issueThe Netherlands is one of the countries in Europe with the highest density of visitor attractions. Despite this abundance, many visitor attractions are not fully accessible to everyone, particularly to visitors with disabilities who sometimes are not eligible to ride due to safety concerns, yet when eligible generally still encounter numerous barriers. Accessibility of visitor attractions can be approached in various ways. However, because the focus often lies on operational and technical aspects (e.g., reducing stimuli at certain times of the day by turning o[ music, o[ering alternative wheelchair entrances), strategic and community-focused approaches are often overlooked. More importantly, there is also a lack of attention to the experience of visitors with disabilities. This becomes apparent from several studies from Joint Projects, where visitor attractions are being visited together with experts by experience with various disabilities. Nevertheless, experience is often being regarded as the 'core product' of the leisure sector. The right to meet, discover, develop, relax and thus enjoy this core product is hindered for many people with disabilities due to a lack of knowledge, inaccessibility (physical, digital, social, communicative as well as financial) and discrimination in society. Additionally, recreation entrepreneurs still face a significant gap in reaching the potential market of guests with disabilities and their networks. Thus, despite the numerous initiatives in the leisure sector aimed at improving accessibility on technical and operational fronts, often people with disabilities are still not being able to experience the same kind of enjoyment as those without. These observations form the pressing impetus for initiating the current research project, tapping into the numerous opportunities for learning, development and growth on making leisure offer more inclusive.Benefit to societyIn total, the current project approach comes with a number of enrichments in terms of both knowledge and methodology: a mixed-methods approach that allows for comparing data from different sources to obtain a more complete picture of the experience; a methodological co-design process that honours the 'nothing about us without us' principle; and benchmarking for a group (i.e., people with challenges on the auditory spectrum) that despite the size of its population has thus far mostly been overlooked.
Binnen het huidige muziekaanbod voor ouderen zijn veel praktijken gericht op woonzorg- en verpleeghuizen. Het grootste deel van de kwetsbare ouderen woont echter thuis. Vanuit de gedachte dat muziek een katalysator kan zijn voor welzijn en welbevinden, wordt met Dichtbij met Muziek een nieuwe innovatieve muziekpraktijk geïnitieerd waarbij professionele musici op maat muziek maken voor kwetsbare ouderen die (nog) thuis wonen en hun mantelzorgers. De uitbraak van de corona-pandemie zorgde ervoor dat de praktijk uiteindelijk virtueel tot stand is gekomen.Voorziene uitkomsten van het onderzoek naar de (virtuele) praktijk zijn:-Een nieuw ontworpen virtuele vorm van persoonsgericht musiceren met kwetsbare ouderen die (nog) thuis wonen en hun mantelzorgers, mogelijk inzetbaar in diverse situaties van isolatie;-Beter begrip van de bijdrage die (virtueel) persoonsgericht musiceren kan leveren aan het welzijn van kwetsbare ouderen, hun mantelzorgers en hun directe omgeving.Professionele musici ontwikkelen steeds vaker praktijken in ouderenzorgcontexten. De afgelopen jaren heeft het lectoraat Lifelong Learning in Music in samenwerking met (inter)nationale partners uit de muziek- en zorgsector nieuwe intramurale persoonsgerichte muziekpraktijken ontwikkeld: in verpleeghuizen voor mensen met dementie (Muziek en Dementie 2010-2014) en in het ziekenhuis (MiMiC - Meaningful Music in Healthcare 2015-heden). Gemeenschappelijk bij al deze praktijken is de persoonsgerichte aanpak, waarbij musici (gearrangeerd) repertoire spelen of een nieuw stuk improviseren, ‘in het moment’ en op maat van mensen. Binnen het huidige muziekaanbod voor ouderen zijn veel praktijken gericht op woonzorg- en verpleeghuizen. Het grootste deel van de kwetsbare ouderen in Nederland woont echter thuis. Dichtbij met muziek wil onderzoeken hoe persoonsgericht musiceren kan worden ingezet op maat van een groeiende groep thuiswonende kwetsbare ouderen en hun mantelzorgers. Als gevolg van de coronapandemie is de ontwikkeling van de praktijk gestart op virtuele wijze.Het doel van dit onderzoek is de ontwikkeling van een virtuele vorm van persoonsgericht musiceren voor kwetsbare ouderen en hun naasten, cq. mantelzorgers, waarbij wordt gedoeld op het versterken van bestaande relaties en gevoel van menselijke waardigheid.
