This presentation aims to offer a fresh way of conceiving the foundation for specialist higher music education, one that engages both with core principles and values in professional music-making and with the turbulence and rapid change characterizing the music industries and wider societies. ‘Musicians as makers in society’ is a paradigm for higher music education, developed as part of the AEC’s project ‘Strengthening Music in Society’ funded by Creative Europe. It seeks to support the future of professional music practices in vibrant, inclusive ways, drawing extensively on collaboration and approaches to co-creation in music. It focuses on identifying a conceptual foundation for strategic development of institutional purpose, curriculum design and pedagogy, and indeed professional music practices.
The session will unpack the concept of ‘Musicians as makers in society’, considering both ‘musicians as makers’ and ‘musicians in society’, and it will explore the relationships of these elements to musical excellence as an underpinning value for higher music education. The session will then consider implications for practice in higher music education, exploring examples of the concept in action and their relationship to collaboration and co-creation, and highlighting some of the challenges of embracing and sustaining such paradigm reflection.
