This essay addresses the relationship of improvisation and identity. Biographicalresearch that was conducted by the author into professional musicians’ lifelong learning showed the huge importance of improvisation for personal expression. Musically, the concept of sound appeared to serve as a strong metaphor for identity. In addition, ethnographic research conducted as part of the project Music for Life in London, and published by Smilde, Page and Alheit in 2014, where musicians work in creative music workshops with people with dementia and their caregivers, shed light on the use of improvisation as an expression of the identity of ‘the other’ (i.e. the person with dementia). Sound again appeared to serve as a metaphor for identity. The essay draws on the work of George Herbert Mead on identity, which distinguishes between the personal ‘I’ and the social ‘Me’, and points out that both aspects are essential for the self. In this sense, improvisation can be conceived as a means of communication thatconnects the personal with the social. Furthermore, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another (1992), it is shown that this concept of improvisation in relation to personal and social identity may be transferred to forms of community engagement through music. However, despite its huge importance, improvisation is still often marginalised in specialist higher music education, particularly in conservatoires, and the essay finishes with a strong plea for conservatoires to take up their role in the midst of society and embed improvisation in the core of the curriculum.
The main focus of this article is on performance anxiety and stage fright in musicians, seen through the lens of biographical research. In short, biographical research deals with research into learning, taking as point of departure that important learning always needs to be understood in relation to the biography of the learner (Alheit 2009, p. 116). Within biographical learning people can act as their own change agents. This article discusses biographical findings on musicians’ generic leadership when coping with profession-related health issues and the transformative and transitional learning evolving from this.
African photography has emerged as a significant focus of research and scholarship over the last twenty years, the result of a growing interest in postcolonial societies and cultures and a turn towards visual evidence across the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, many rich and fascinating photographic collections have come to light. This volume explores the complex theoretical and practical issues involved in the study of African photographic archives, based on case studies drawn from across the continent dating from the 19th century to the present day. Chapters consider what constitutes an archive, from the familiar mission and state archives to more local, vernacular and personal accumulations of photographs; the importance of a critical and reflexive engagement with photographic collections; and the question of where and what is 'Africa', as constructed in the photographic archive. Essential reading for all researchers working with photographic archives, this book consolidates current thinking on the topic and sets the agenda for future research in this field.
We had been involved in the redesign of the 4 Period Rooms of the Marquise Palace, also called the Palace of Secrets, in Bergen op Zoom. This design was based on the biography of a historical figure: Marie Anne van Arenberg, whose dramatic life was marked by secrets. Each of the 4 rooms represents a turning moment in Marie Anne’s story: the official marriage, the secret marriage and the betrayal, the dilemma and choice, with, in a final room, the epilogue. These different episodes are reflected in the way the rooms are furnished: the ballroom, the bedroom, the dining room. The Secret Marquise as design and exhibition has brought more visitors to the museum. As designers and researchers, however, we were interested in understanding more about this success, and, in particular, in understanding the visitors experience, both emotionally and sensorially at different moments/situations during the story-driven experience.In the fall of 2021, the visitors’ lived experience was evaluated using different approaches: a quantitative approach using biometric measurements to register people’s emotions during their visit, and a qualitative one consisting of a combination of observations, visual imagery, and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).Qualitatively, our aim was to understand how respondents made sense of Marie Anne’s story in the way in which this was presented throughout the exhibition. We specifically looked at the personal context and frame of reference (e.g., previous experiences, connection to the visitor’s own life story, associations with other stories from other sources). In the design of the rooms, we used a combination of digital/interactive elements (such as a talking portrait, an interactive dinner table, an interactive family painting), and traditional physical objects (some 17th century original objects, some reproductions from that time). The second focal point of the study is to understand how these different elements lead the visitors experience.
