This paper will explore types of learning, which takes place when musicians work in situations where they have to connect to community contexts.It will first address musicians’ changing professional roles in the changing sociocultural landscape and the need for lifelong learning and emergence of life wide learning which this brings about. It will then go into the rise of the ‘community musician’ and the leadership this requires to exercise, illuminated through an exampleof musicians working with people living with dementia and their care staff.Based on this example perspectives of these musicians’ learning are discussed, where especially transformative learning, where the musician needs to change her frame of reference (Mezirow) and transitional learning, brought about by small changes in musicians’ life world and biography, seem at stake.Keynote address: Royal College of Music in Stockholm: symposium titled: Students' ownership of learning: a meeting place for teachers and students in higher music education,15-17 September 2010
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Within the study ‘Musicians as Lifelong Learners: Discovery through Biography’, biographical research was used to examine key developments in the professional lives of musicians, focusing on the relationship between their life, educational and career span ant their learning styles. This resulted in a collection of 32 narrative learning biographies of musicians from different countries and with various careers. Musicians with a performing career, music pedagogues, and musicians with a portfolio career, who combine different roles within various areas of engagement, are portrayed. The main thread throughout the biographies is the question of how these musicians learn as ‘lifelong learners’.
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Within a study on ‘musicians as lifelong learners’, explorative biographical research was used. When analysing the learning biographies informed by grounded theory, the emergence of profession-related health issues was striking. More than half of the portrayed musicians suffered from both physical and psychological problems, the latter mostly consisting of performance anxiety (stage fright), which was often connected to low self-esteem.However creative coping strategies were also frequently found by the musicians, showing their extensive use of metacognitive skills. This paper addresses the coping strategies found and relates it to musicians’ transformative learning.
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Musicians today face major changes in the social-cultural landscape and thus in the music profession, which is rapidly changing. The changing cultural life leads to a shift in nature of the career of musicians, suggesting more flexible career patterns and a great need for transferable skills. Musicians hold no longer a job for life, but are increasingly self-employed, so entrepreneurship becomes more and more important. They often have a portfolio career, where they combine several forms of professional activities.
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This article intends to focus on those critical issues arising from the Connect case study (Renshaw, 2005) that have wider applicability in contemporary professional practice in terms of lifelong learning. Special attention will be given to the following areas:• formal, non-formal and informal learning;• musical leadership;• quality;• self-assessment and reflective practice;• professional development of musicians.
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In leaving the more traditional territories of the concert performance for broader societal contexts, professional musicians increasingly devise music in closer collaboration with their audience rather than present it on a stage. Although the interest for such forms of devising co-creative musicking within the (elderly) health care sector is growing, the work can be considered relatively new. In terms of research, multiple studies have sought to understand the impact of such work on musicians and participants, however little is known about what underpins the musicians’ actions in these settings. With this study, I sought to address this gap by investigating professional musicians’ emerging practices when devising co-creative musicking with elderly people. Three broad concepts were used as a theoretical background to the study: Theory of Practice, co-creative musicking, and Praxialism. Firstly, I used Theory of Practice to help understand the nature of emerging practices in a wider context of change in the field of music and habitus of musicians and participants. Theory of Practice enabled me to consider a practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Secondly, I drew the knowledge from co-creative musicking, which is a concept I gathered from two existing concepts: co-creation and musicking. Musicking (Small, 1998), which considers music as something we do (including any mode of engagement with music), provided a holistic and inclusive way of looking at participation in music-making. The co-creation paradigm encompasses a view on enterprise that consists of bringing together parties to jointly create an outcome that is meaningful to all (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2014). The concept served as a lens to specify the jointness of the musicking and challenge issues of power in the engagement of participants in the creative-productive process. Thirdly, Praxialism considers musicking as an activity that encompasses “musical doers, musical doing, something done and contexts in which the former take place” (Elliott, 1995). Praxialism sets out a vision on music that goes beyond the musical work and includes the meanings and values of those involved (Silverman, Davis & Elliott, 2014). The concept allowed me to examine the work and emerging relationships as a result of devising co-creative musicking from an ethical perspective. Given the subject’s relative newness and rather unexplored status, I examined existing work empirically through an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Four cases were selected where data was gathered through episodic interviewing (Flick, 2009) and participant observation. Elements of a constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) were used for performing an abductive analysis. The analysis included initial coding, focused coding, the use of sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1969 in Hammersley, 2013) and memoing. I wrote a thick description (Geertz, 1973) for each case portraying the work from my personal experience. The descriptions are included in the dissertation as one separate chapter and foreshadow the exposition of the analysis in a next chapter. In-depth study of the creative-productive processes of the cases showed the involvement of multiple co-creative elements, such as a dialogical interaction between musicians and audience. However, participants’ contributions were often adopted implicitly, through the musicians interpreting behaviour and situations. This created a particular power dynamic and challenges as to what extent the negotiation can be considered co-creative. The implicitness of ‘making use’ of another person’s behaviour with the other not (always) being aware of this also triggered an ethical perspective, especially because some of the cases involved participants that were vulnerable. The imbalance in power made me examine the relationship that emerges between musicians and participants. As a result of a closer contact in the co-creative negotiation, I witnessed a contact of a highly personal, sometimes intimate, nature. I recognized elements of two types of connections. One type could be called ‘humanistic’, as a friendship in which there is reciprocal care and interest for the other. The other could be seen as ‘functional’, which means that the relationship is used as a resource for providing input for the creative musicking process. From this angle, I have compared the relationship with that of a relationship of an artist with a muse. After having examined the co-creative and relational sides of the interaction in the four cases, I tuned in to the musicians’ contribution to these processes and relationships. I discovered that their devising in practice consisted of a continuous double balancing act on two axes: one axis considers the other and oneself as its two ends. Another axis concerns the preparedness and unpredictability at its ends. Situated at the intersection of the two axes are the musicians’ intentionality, which is fed by their intentions, values and ethics. The implicitness of the co-creation, the two-sided relationship, the potential vulnerability of participants, and the musicians’ freedom in navigating and negotiation, together, make the devising of co-creative musicking with elderly people an activity that involves ethical challenges that are centred around a tension between prioritizing doing good for the other, associated with a eudaimonic intention, and prioritizing values of the musical art form, resembling a musicianist intention. The results therefore call for a musicianship that involves acting reflectively from an ethical perspective.
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In order to meet the challenges of rapidly changing cultural life in the 21st century, professional musicians have to be lifelong learners, drawing on a wide range of knowledge and skills. To be successful in a variety of roles, they need a reflective and responsive attitude to change.This chapter addresses the concept of lifelong learning and its meaning for professional musicians, as well as the ways institutions and teachers can facilitate attitudes and capacities for lifelong learning. A biographical perspective will provide a lens through which concepts of lifelong learning can be seen through the interconnection of musicians' personal and professional development. Lifelong learning in the aggregate complex of music education, (i.e., educational organizations and learning environments, teachers, students, and graduates) is especially relevant and will be addressed. The chapter finishes with some recommendations related to implementing the concept of lifelong learning in music education.
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In this article I will address the changes and innovations in the music profession in Europe which are faced by our students and graduates, as well as new developments in their music careers. We will look into the question of what musicians’ changing needs are and will then show how conservatoires in Europe respond to them. Consequently the various roles that musicians have within their changing career patterns and the profession will be addressed and an example will be given through the description of an emerging career type, that of the (performing and educating) musician who is engaged with new audiences in various social contexts, in other venues than the traditional concert venues. This will be followed by an exploration of the joint master programme New Audiences and Innovative Practice, which has been developed with a number of music academies in Europe and the USA and in which this particular type of musician and practice are central. The article will then finish by exploring the interconnection between the performing and educational roles of today’s musicians, the question of how these two inform each other and how this can lead to the strengthening of musicians’ learning processes. Lastly I will reflect on what these developments mean for curricula in the music academy.
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In order to meet the challenges of rapidly changing cultural life in the twenty-first century, professional musicians need to be lifelong learners, drawing on a wide range of knowledge and skills. To be succesful in a variety of roles, they require a reflective and responsive attitude to change. This chapter addresses the concept and meaning of lifelong learning among professional musicians, as well as the ways institutions and teachers can facilitate attitudes and capacities for lifelong learning.
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Final report of the AEC working group of Continuing Professional Development for Musicians in the framework of the Socrates Thematic Network (TNP) for Music.
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