AEC Annual Congress and General Assembly 2026

with Tania Lisboa and Diana Salazar, Royal College of Music, London, Marianne Lokke Jacobsen, Royal Danish Academy of Music Copenhangen, and Marloes de Nul and Jack Mahoney, EPASA

This interactive pre-congress workshop invites participants to critically examine the future of one-to-one teaching in higher music education by exploring the traditions, values, and assumptions underlying the master-apprentice model, while considering new approaches to studio pedagogy in a changing educational landscape.

One-to-one teaching remains central to conservatoire education, yet evolving expectations around curriculum innovation, student voice, wellbeing, inclusion, employability, and sustainability are reshaping the role of studio pedagogy. The workshop addresses how institutions can respond to these challenges while ensuring that expert teachers are recognised as active partners in pedagogical development and institutional change.

Through role-playing, guided discussion, collaborative activities, and reflection on teaching practices, participants will explore different perspectives on the master-apprentice model and its place within contemporary conservatoire education. By taking on roles that differ from their own professional identities—including students, teachers, and institutional leaders—participants will engage in a fictional institutional dialogue about how to rethink traditional approaches to instrumental education and develop alternative pedagogical frameworks.

The workshop draws on the aims and initial findings of the transnational research project ConsPed 2.0: Bringing 1:1 teaching in the future, led by researchers at the Royal College of Music, London, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. The project explores new understandings of one-to-one teaching through peer observation and collaboration, positioning teachers not as subjects of research but as contributors and partners in shaping the future of studio pedagogy.

By combining critical reflection on the master-apprentice model with research-informed approaches to peer dialogue, feedback, and professional development, the workshop will encourage participants to explore how stronger connections between teachers, students, and institutional leadership can support meaningful pedagogical change.

Overall aim:
The workshop seeks to create a collaborative space for rethinking one-to-one teaching, challenging established models where appropriate, and identifying practical strategies for developing more inclusive, reflective, and responsive approaches to conservatoire pedagogy while preserving the artistic and personal dimensions that make individual learning distinctive.

with Abra K. Bush, DMA, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University; David Bahanovich, Curtis Institute, US

Conservatoires throughout Europe and around the world are navigating a period of profound transformation. Institutions are being called upon to respond to rapidly changing artistic, educational, technological, and societal environments while maintaining their commitment to artistic excellence. Questions of relevance, responsiveness, innovation, inclusion, sustainability, student well-being, community engagement, and technological change increasingly shape institutional decision-making.

As conservatoires move from being primarily inward-focused institutions toward becoming more connected and interactive participants within broader cultural, educational, and civic ecosystems, leadership capacity becomes a critical strategic resource. The ability to foster collaboration, navigate complexity, build trust, engage diverse stakeholders, and lead meaningful change is now essential to institutional success.

Yet leadership development remains one of the least developed areas within higher music education. Most leaders in conservatoires arrive in leadership positions after distinguished careers as performers, educators, scholars, or artists. While these experiences provide deep artistic and educational expertise, opportunities for structured leadership development, peer learning, and reflective leadership practice remain relatively uncommon within the sector.
This highly interactive workshop creates a dedicated space for current and emerging leaders to explore the values, mindsets, and practices required to lead responsive institutions in a rapidly evolving environment. Participants will engage in a sequence of interconnected learning experiences that move from personal leadership reflection to applied institutional challenges and future-oriented strategic thinking.

The workshop is organized around four interconnected themes:
1. Leading from Values and Purpose – clarifying the values that shape leadership decisions and organizational culture.
2. Values in Action: Leadership Case Studies – exploring realistic conservatoire leadership challenges through collaborative analysis and problem-solving.
3. Leading Creative People and Cultures – examining leadership approaches that foster trust, engagement, psychological safety, and collaboration in artistic environments.
4. Leading Responsive Institutions – exploring how leaders can navigate change, strengthen partnerships, encourage innovation, and build resilient organizations.

Consistent with the Congress theme, From Institution to Interaction, the workshop emphasizes leadership as a relational and collaborative practice. Learning will occur through case studies, peer consultation, facilitated discussion, collaborative problem-solving, reflective exercises, and structured dialogue rather than traditional lecture-based presentation.

with Clara Hamberger, student, Hochschule für Musik (HSM) Basel Eva-Maria Stadlbauer, student, HSM Basel Leonie Trips, student, HSM Basel Lucia Furlotti, student, HSM Basel Prof. Peter Knodt, lecturer and instructional development coordinator (Beauftragter Lehrentwicklung), HSM Basel, Switzerland

In this three-hour interactive workshop, participants experience the higher education and teaching development tool Round Table. It is a student-moderated group discussion between lecturers and their classes or learning groups. It aims to actively develop a culture of communication as well as the individual growth of all participants. After a short icebreaker and introduction, participants find themselves in a simulated Round Table group discussion. Students take on the role of lecturers, while lecturers act as students. This role reversal enables new perspectives and can foster empathy. This simulated Round Table group discussion is led by the workshop facilitators, trained student moderators from Basel. Participants may choose between an imaginary group of choir singers and conductors or the learning group of an ear training course and their lecturers.
They now experience the key pitch by the student moderators, through which they learn everything essential about Round Table:

• Vision & Spirit
• Origins
• Goals
• Role & Responsibilities of the Moderators
• Values & Rules
• Outcome Protocol

The key pitch concludes with questions and answers. Afterwards, participants identify their own discussion topics through whisper pairs and moderation cards, prioritize them actively on the discussion board with the support of the moderators, and then begin the actual discussion with the jointly selected opening topic.
The group discussion later transitions into the phase of securing the results, during which the moderators create a mutually agreed outcome protocol through paraphrasing.
Afterwards, a moderated 30-minute discussion allows for the exchange of first impressions, questions, answers, and feedback.
At this point, two participants take on the moderation role, supported by the workshop leaders. This gives them the opportunity to try moderating themselves.
After a break, participants are given 60 minutes of practical insight into the moderation training for future student Round Table moderators. Once again, all moderation tools and skills, as well as the goals and spirit of Round Table, are made tangible and experiential in a concise way. Participation forms the core of this workshop, which concludes with a final feedback round. By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to assess whether Round Table could support student participation, communication, cultural processes, and the development of 21st century skills at their own institution, and therefore represent a meaningful innovation.

Case Study Presentation
In this twenty-five-minute case study presentation, participants experience the higher education and teaching development tool Round Table.
The presentation begins with a short theatrical scene. In it, a grandmother tells her grandchildren how she co-developed the Round Table project during her years as a student and how it became established at her institution at the time. The scene is deliberately set in the future and offers the audience a retrospective perspective. In this way, it not only provides an initial overview of the project, but also gives an idea of how Round Table might have shaped university culture in the long term.
At the same time, it becomes clear that the project was not only able to create an impact at the grandmother’s institution, but that the presentation at the AEC Congress was also able to inspire developments at other institutions.
From the future, the journey returns to the present in Hamburg. There, the audience finds itself as part of a Round Table discussion group. Two student moderators facilitate the introduction into the discussion through an artistically designed multimedia and multisensory pitch.
In an illustrative and engaging way, Round Table is not only explained, but made comprehensively experienceable.
The audience then becomes active itself by collecting its first questions and responses to Round Table through whisper pairs and moderation cards.
The moderators organize these contributions on a discussion board and, together with the audience, determine the first discussion topic as well as the order of the following topics.
The audience is then informed in summary form about the group discussion that would follow in a real Round Table setting and about the concluding outcome protocol.
The original Round Table jingle accompanies and supports the presentation. A memorable melody and concise textual elements create an emotional connection and anchor Round Table in the audience’s memory.
In just over 15 minutes, the audience can get a firsthand impression of what Round Table is all about, what potential it holds, and whether the format could be beneficial for their own university.
In the case study presentation as well, the connection between participation, creativity, and artistic expression forms the essence of the communication approach.

by AEC Special Education Needs WG (Elide Scarlata, Melissa Mercadal and Kim Fallen Bailey)

Higher music education institutions are becoming increasingly diverse learning environments, welcoming students with a wide range of abilities, experiences and learning profiles. While access to higher music education has improved significantly in recent years, many students with disabilities, additional educational needs (SEN) and neurodivergent learning profiles continue to encounter barriers that affect their participation, wellbeing and sense of belonging. Creating truly inclusive institutions requires more than individual accommodations; it requires a culture of listening, collaboration and shared responsibility across all levels of an institution.
Drawing on the outcomes of the Erasmus+ IncluMusic project (2022–2025), this interactive three-hour workshop, led by the AEC Special Education Needs (SEN) Working Group, explores how HMEIs can develop more inclusive approaches to learning, teaching and student support. The workshop aligns closely with the Congress themes of comprehensive learning and teaching, diversity and inclusion, and responsive educational practice.
Rather than presenting inclusion as a set of policies or procedures, the workshop invites participants to experience inclusion through dialogue, reflection and creative practice. The session begins with a participatory singing workshop designed as both an icebreaker and a shared learning experience. Through accessible vocal activities and collective music-making, participants will explore the idea of listening to their own voice while becoming more aware of the voices of others. The session establishes a key premise that underpins the workshop: listening is not only a musical skill but also an essential component of inclusive leadership, teaching and institutional culture.
Participants will then hear directly from students with disabilities, additional educational needs and neurodivergent learning profiles through a series of short video testimonies taken from students across our partner institutions. These student voices provide valuable insights into the realities of studying within higher music education, highlighting both the barriers students encounter and the practices that have enabled them to succeed. By placing lived experience at the centre of the discussion, the workshop encourages participants to consider how student perspectives can inform institutional development and decision-making.
Building on these insights, participants will take part in a World Café activity. Working in small groups, they will engage with a series of student personas representing learners with different support needs entering higher music education. Facilitators at each table will adopt different institutional roles, including instrumental teachers, administrators, librarians, academic tutors and senior leaders. Through discussion, role-play and collaborative problem-solving, participants will explore how different parts of an institution can work together to support student success.
This activity moves the conversation beyond individual teaching practice and towards a more holistic understanding of inclusion. Participants will consider how communication, institutional structures and shared responsibility influence the student experience and how sustainable support systems can be developed across teaching, administrative and leadership contexts. Particular attention will be given to the role of the Academic Tutor model developed through IncluMusic, which provides a coordinated approach to supporting students while strengthening institutional capacity for inclusive practice.
The workshop also incorporates short mindfulness and reflective activities, recognising the importance of wellbeing for both students and staff. These moments create space for participants to reflect on their own experiences of learning, support and belonging, while considering how institutions can respond to increasing levels of stress, anxiety and complexity within higher education environments.
The session concludes with a facilitated discussion, bringing together key themes, practical strategies and examples of effective practice from across the European higher music education sector. Participants will also be introduced to the IncluMusic online training resources and invited to contribute to an ongoing network of institutions committed to strengthening inclusion and social participation within higher music education.
By combining student voice, creative practice, collaborative problem-solving and institutional reflection, this workshop offers participants practical tools and new perspectives for creating learning environments in which all students can thrive. Ultimately, it argues that inclusion is not the responsibility of a single individual or department, but a collective process that begins with listening and leads to greater belonging, participation and success for all learners.

Christiane Loell and Barbara Hans, Institute of Culture and Media Management, University of Music and Theatre Hamburg

Music students and emerging professionals face increasing pressures: performance expectations, uncertain career pathways, portfolio careers, digital visibility, economic precarity, and rapidly evolving professional roles. While resilience is often framed as an individual competence, Higher Music Education Institutions play a crucial role in creating the conditions that enable students, teachers, and future professionals to thrive.
This interactive workshop explores resilience as a shared responsibility between individuals, educators, and institutions. Through collaborative reflection and case-based discussion, participants will examine how educational structures, institutional cultures, and teaching practices can either strengthen or undermine resilience.
Together, participants will identify practical approaches to supporting wellbeing, professional agency, and sustainable artistic careers while responding to the realities of today’s interconnected cultural ecosystem. The workshop aligns with the Congress theme by examining how conservatoires can move from institutional structures towards responsive educational environments that prepare musicians for meaningful and sustainable professional lives.
The workshop aims to facilitate a structured, confidential discussion on the topic of stress and resilience. The session will therefore follow the Chatham House Rule. It draws on the expertise of the Centre of Excellence for Resilience at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT) and is based on the centre’s experience with similar formats. The aim is to facilitate a cross-organisational discussion of stress during the session, to better understand and structure it (using a model developed and already tested by the Centre), and ultimately to develop best practices for dealing with stress und foster resilience. These best practices cover both the individual and organisational levels.

with Orla McDonagh and Jacques Moreau, MusiQuE

As artistic practices increasingly transcend disciplinary boundaries, higher arts education institutions are challenged to create environments that support collaboration across art forms. Multi-arts institutions, which bring together music, theatre, dance, visual arts, design, media arts or other disciplines within a shared institutional framework, offer valuable insights into how interdisciplinarity can be fostered in practice.

Yet the mere coexistence of different disciplines does not automatically generate collaboration. Interdisciplinary projects flourish when institutions intentionally create the conditions that enable encounters, dialogue and experimentation.

Drawing on diverse institutional experiences, participants from multi-arts institutions will be invited to reflect on how they cultivate synergies between departments and support the emergence of cross-disciplinary initiatives among students and teaching staff members: What organisational frameworks, pedagogical approaches or institutional strategies encourage collaboration across disciplines? How can institutions create formal spaces for exchange while also nurturing the informal encounters from which innovative artistic ideas often emerge?

At start, participants will be invited to share practice examples (using the entertaining Gasta method).
A discussion will then be organised around four thematic tables:
– How can institutions enable cross-arts encounters and collaborative projects among students?
– How can institutions encourage interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration among the teaching staff?
– How can the interaction with research contribute to the development of interdisciplinary cultures and practices?
– What can specialised music institutions learn from the experiences of multi-arts institutions?
Finally, participants will discuss challenges, what needs to happen to resolve those challenges, why interdisciplinarity matters and should be taught/facilitated, and how it could be evaluated.

The session is designed as a participatory exchange of practices, experiences and perspectives. It seeks not only to showcase examples from multi-arts institutions but also to stimulate reflection on how higher music education institutions (i.e. non multi-arts) can create more connected, collaborative and innovative learning environments. By bringing together participants from a range of institutional contexts, the session will contribute to the wider AEC conversation on preparing artists for a professional landscape in which collaboration across disciplines is increasingly essential.

Additionally, through the collaboration between the AEC and MusiQuE, this discussion could inform a potential update to the MusiQuE Standards for the specific context of those multidisciplinary institutions reviews.

with Thom Guilbert, UK, AEC digitisation WG

The session aims to provide a new perspective on assessment design and skills development and provide some practical, actionable suggestions for shaping the student learning experience to address some current challenges.

moderated by Alexandros Spyrou, University of the Arts Sharjah, UAE, with inputs by Tetiana Sovhyra, Ukraine and Casti/Gatti, Scarapecchi, Conservatorio La Spezia, Italy

Whether institutions acknowledge it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is already inside the conservatoire and on both sides of the lectern. Students are using AI tools to generate essays, draft programme notes, brainstorm ideas, or even compose music. At the same time, faculty members and management are quietly drawing on the same tools to grade and give feedback, draft curricula and learning outcomes, design assessment rubrics, prepare accreditation documentation, and brainstorm repertoire, projects, and teaching strategies. Most institutions have responded with silence, caution, or prohibition rather than critical integration, without asking what it means when the people assessing artistry are delegating parts of that judgement to AI. This panel opens a frank conversation about what it means to learn, teach, assess, research, and lead in the age of generative AI, and what we risk if we simply look away. The session can bring together perspectives spanning the whole institution: faculty members who may seek to critically incorporate AI tools to provide feedback on student work; researchers who may use AI in their scholarship; curriculum designers who use AI in mapping learning outcomes, and preparing accreditation documentation; music students who may speak from lived experience about navigating AI use without institutional guidance. Together they surface the uncomfortable symmetry of the situation: the same tools students are warned against are increasingly part of how their work is designed, taught, and judged.
The session opens with a 10-minute Silent Discussion via Mentimeter: participants anonymously respond to questions such as: ‘Where do you use AI as part of your work as a student, teacher, or leader?’; ‘Which AI tools do you use most frequently?’; ‘What do you most fear, and most hope for, about AI in music education?’. Results are displayed live to set the collective temperature of the room. The anonymity matters: it allows faculty and managers to disclose uses they may be reluctant to name openly. The panel then responds to these live results rather than pre-scripted statements (20 minutes), before transitioning into a Fishbowl Discussion (30 minutes) in which audience members from any role are invited into the inner circle to share challenges and propositions. A final 15 minutes discussion synthesises emerging principles. The session does not seek to resolve the AI question but rather to open a multi-voiced institutional conversation, across students, faculty, and leadership, that must happen if conservatoires are to lead rather than react. Outputs are shared with participants as a synthesised document following the Congress.

with Vittoria Pagani, Musik-Akademie Basel / Hochschule für Musik FHNW,Switzerland

Despite growing interest in interculturality, inclusion, and participatory learning, many Higher Music Education Institutions (HMEIs) still rely predominantly on notation-based models of musical transmission. This raises practical and pedagogical questions: what forms of musical knowledge remain marginal within conservatory structures, and what might oral–aural traditions contribute to contemporary higher music education?
This session departs from an ongoing practice-based research project at the Musik-Akademie Basel, where an introductory course in Hindustani music — now in its fourth year — serves as an open space for exploring what happens when oral–aural pedagogy enters a Western institutional environment. The research explores this question: how might Hindustani music’s oral–aural pedagogy offer complementary perspectives to notation-based training?
The project emerges from a long-term bi-musical practice developed across Western classical and Hindustani traditions, informed by the teaching lineage of the Maihar Gharana as transmitted by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ken Zuckerman. Rather than positioning oral pedagogy in opposition to notation-based learning, the research explores how different epistemologies of musical transmission may enter into productive dialogue. Particular attention is given to three interconnected areas: how oral–aural methods can offer alternative approaches to musical perception and learning; how collective practices relate to student agency and well-being; and how intercultural pedagogy can encourage forms of musical dialogue.
Preliminary observations have raised recurring questions concerning listening, memory, and artistic motivation within students’ learning experiences. Participants have described experiencing a renewed sense of agency in ensemble situations and new perspectives on their principal areas of studies and expertise. In parallel, the annual Indian music seminar co-organised at the Musik-Akademie Basel has highlighted the potential for communities of practice that extend beyond local institutional boundaries.
At the same time, practical collaboration between HMEIs and non-Western traditions often remains fragmented. Challenges such as the variable visibility of non-Western offerings and the practical difficulties of communication between institutions highlight a valuable opportunity to reflect collectively on how HMEIs interact with one another and how more sustainable forms of collaboration might emerge.
The session opens with a brief introduction featuring slides and video documentation of Hindustani pedagogy, followed by a short participatory listening and oral transmission exercise. This initial experience serves as a starting point for reflecting on a central pedagogical tension: brief encounters with oral transmission cannot replicate the long-term processes through which students gradually develop alternative listening, memory, and learning strategies. This opens broader questions regarding the institutional conditions necessary for such processes to unfold meaningfully within HMEIs. To unpack these systemic implications, participants will be invited into a World Café dialogue to explore how oral–aural practices and notation-based training interact, how institutions can support student well-being and agency, and how communication channels between institutions might become more accessible and interconnected.
The session is conceived as a co-creative space for formative exchange. Participants are invited to share their own institutional experiences and critical perspectives, contributing to a broader and more connected research landscape where the aim is not consensus, but constructive dialogue and exchange.

Dr. Kris Chesky – Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Peabody Institute and School of Medicine

Higher music education institutions have traditionally focused on artistic excellence, performance preparation, and professional identity development. Yet increasing evidence demonstrates that musicians experience disproportionately high rates of occupational health concerns, including performance anxiety, musculoskeletal disorders, hearing disorders, burnout, and career sustainability challenges. Despite growing awareness, conservatoires often continue to address these concerns through fragmented wellness initiatives rather than through institution-wide educational and cultural frameworks.
This co-creation space introduces the emerging framework of Occupational Health in Music (OHM) and the Total Musician Health (TMH) model as a systems-based approach for rethinking institutional responsibility in higher music education. Rather than framing health solely as an individual or clinical issue, TMH positions musician wellbeing, occupational sustainability, and healthy artistic development as shared educational responsibilities embedded across curriculum, pedagogy, leadership, and institutional culture.

The session aligns with the Congress theme “From Institution to Interaction” by inviting participants to collectively explore how conservatoires can move from reactive harm reduction toward proactive, responsive educational ecosystems that support sustainable artistic careers. Participants will engage in a structured and highly interactive process designed to foster dialogue across roles, institutions, and national contexts.

The session will begin with a brief framing presentation introducing key concepts from OHM and TMH, including:
• music as an occupation;
• sustainable artistic development;
• institutional responsibility;
• role-based educational ethics;
• and the relationship between artistic excellence and occupational sustainability.

Participants will then engage in a World Café exercise exploring questions such as:
• What responsibilities should conservatories assume regarding musician health and sustainability?
• What cultural or structural barriers limit institutional engagement?
• How can health responsibility be integrated without compromising artistic identity or excellence?
A collaborative problem-solving activity will then invite participants to design practical institutional responses related to:
• curriculum;
• faculty development;
• ensemble practices;
• leadership;
• student support;
• and professional preparation.

The session will conclude with a facilitated Fishbowl discussion focused on future directions, institutional leadership, and opportunities for international collaboration.
The proposed session builds on the outcomes of the First Global Summit on Occupational Health in Music, held at Johns Hopkins University in 2025, which brought together international experts from music, medicine, occupational health, public health, and arts education to explore future directions for musician health and institutional responsibility.
This session is designed not as a lecture, but as an interactive space for collective reflection, institutional imagination, and practical co-creation.

Bernard Lanskey (Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia); Sean Gregory, (Guildhall School of Music & Drama. London, UK), Lies Colman, (Royal Conservatoiire The Hague, Netherlands), Anothai Nitibhon, (Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, Bangkok, Thailand)

In 1987, Professor Peter Renshaw delivered some pioneering Gresham Lectures in London on what music and music education – at the intersection of community – might look like in 2000 and beyond. By 2000, his voice was a powerful presence in the AEC, and his impact remains evident in conservatoires globally.

With Peter turning 90 and the AEC’s 2026 theme, From Institutions to Interaction, his 40-year-old reflections offer a timely lens on our evolution. Last year, I listened to the lectures (now easily accessible online) and shared my annotations with international peers.

This session will share key points from the 1987 lectures as a catalyst for contemporary stories of institutional interaction from Europe (Guildhall, Sibelius Academy, The Hague), Southeast Asia (Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory), and Australia (Queensland Conservatorium) – all traceable to the Guildhall project. The panel includes Sean Gregory (Guildhall), Lies Colman (The Hague), and Anothai Nitibhon (PGVIM), then expands into a World Café conversation.

In his lectures, Peter reflected on audience expectations, citing parameters:

1. Physical space for exchange
2. Social, cultural, linguistic context
3. Social and values frameworks
4. Attitudes to knowledge and meaning.

When interacting with external groups, Peter notes the need to “address the accessibility–alienation continuum,” saying “there are so many barriers already in the music profession.” Aiming to “transcend the consumer dynamic,” he emphasises connecting with “people’s felt needs,” recognising power imbalances. He advocates validating others’ music, “starting from where they are,” and prioritising “music-making” over just listening. Challenging narrow definitions of excellence, he stresses improvisation, collaboration, and more equitable music-making.

Rediscovering these presentations, I was struck how much they still speak to us today. The contexts he illustrated also remain key points of interaction – aged care, minority groups, prisons, schools, hospitals – alongside businesses recognising music’s power to inspire.

Following the panel, the World Café will use three questions, each group led by someone inspired by Peter:

1. What does each institution offer directly to communities beyond obligations involving student learning?
2. How have the approaches advocated by Peter in 1987 – cross-cultural awareness, addressing power imbalances, building improvisation capacity – impacted our 2026 curriculum delivery?
3. What institutional and wider societal barriers leave 40-year-old perceptions still feeling leading‑edge?

The ambition is to recognise that our journey is shared – across the globe today and with those who helped guide us (or ‘…and with those who provoked and then helped guide us.’)

with Thomas Besnard, Mathieu Ferey, CNSMD de Lyon, France

Conservatoires increasingly promote student agency, collaboration and co-creation in learning. Should these principles also shape the way institutions are governed?

In 2022, CNSMD Lyon replaced its traditional instrumental departments with a single Interpretation Faculty, bringing together all performance disciplines under one structure. This reform completed a broader reorganisation of the Music Department into four faculties: Interpretation, Composition, Culture and Pedagogy.

Each faculty is led by a Coordinator who, together with the Director of Music Studies, form the “Music Team” responsible for academic strategy, curriculum design and programme implementation. Over the past four years, this model took form and deeply transformed the institution’s governance, changing the roles and responsibilities of pedagogical and administrative staff across several levels, altering each party’s perimeter. Coordinators, while holding no formal hierarchical authority, have become key actors in strategic decision-making, navigating a position between teaching staff and executive management. At the same time, this collective leadership model has fostered a broader institutional perspective and greatly? encouraged cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Today, CNSMD Lyon is once again entering a new phase of organisational development and re-examining its governance model. Coordinators’ responsibilities were further strengthened, while the Director of Music Studies role evolved towards a more facilitative and transversal function.

This shift raises questions that extend well beyond our own institution :
• How can collective decision-making coexist with clear accountability?
• Have we unconsciously mirrored our students’ demands for a less top-down approach to pedagogy?
• What happens when disagreements arise, and who ultimately takes responsibility?

Rather than presenting a finished model or a success story, this discussion invites participants to question an ongoing institutional experiment. Drawing on experiences from different contexts, the session will explore the opportunities, but also the tensions and potential pitfalls of distributed leadership in conservatoires. Together, we will reflect on how governance structures can support innovation, collaboration and institutional coherence in a rapidly changing higher education landscape.

With Natalie Roe and EPASA Board – EPASA, Helena Gaunt – RWCMD, UK

Leading strategic change, not least in the context of financial pressures, is challenging. This session will explore the potential of developing more distributed forms of leadership, including involving students, to support this kind of process.

In this collaborative session between Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) and the European Performing Arts Student Association (EPASA) we will explore the distribution of leadership across the entirety of a Conservatoire community. We will hear student perspectives on this alternative and less-hierarchical approach to leadership and ask ‘do students want to be considered partners in their institutions?’.

The session will take the form of an interactive workshop, using a work in progress case study of an Extended Leadership Team at RWCMD as the basis for discussion, critical thinking and exchange of ideas. The case study will introduce the rationale for the Extended Leadership Team, and thumbnail sketches of a few projects addressed, ranging from reshaping the performance programme and teaching schedules to a shorter overall academic year, to developing a staff and student well-being plan. A summary of outcomes, benefits and challenges will open questions for workshop discussion, including approaches to students as partners in such work. We will get first hand responses on this case study from students and staff at RWCMD as well as perspectives from AEC and EPASA members and thoughts from the room.

As the call for innovative change in Conservatoire education continues to grow, this session promises to be an insightful and open-minded workshop, breaking down traditional structures in order to create more authentic and collaborative approaches to leadership.

AEC IRC WG with Deborah Kelleher

Internationalisation is increasingly recognised as a strategic driver of institutional development in higher music education. Yet its added value is often viewed primarily through the lens of student mobility, rather than as a catalyst for organisational growth, pedagogical innovation, artistic development, and sustainable resource generation. The synergies that institutions can create between their leaders and international relations coordinators (IRCs) play a key role in helping institutions unlock this broader potential by connecting institutional priorities with international opportunities, partnerships, mobility programmes, and funding schemes.

This interactive session, aimed at those in leadership roles, will explore how internationalisation contributes to institutional excellence and creates tangible value for leaders, staff, and students. Participants will get to know and discuss examples on how programmes such as Erasmus+ and Nordplus not only support mobility but also bring additional resources that can be invested in pedagogical and artistic activities, digital transformation, curriculum development, staff training, and strategic institutional initiatives. These opportunities contribute significantly to internationalisation at home, ensuring that the benefits of international engagement extend beyond those who travel and become embedded within the wider institutional community.

Using a fishbowl discussion format, the session will bring together institutional leaders and internationalisation professionals in a structured dialogue. Participants will be invited to reflect on the question: How can international activities create the greatest value and impact for your institution, and how can leaders and international relations professionals work together to maximise these benefits?

The session will also highlight the importance of regular dialogue between leadership teams and IRCs, demonstrating how collaborative and participatory approaches to governance can strengthen institutional strategy and enhance the impact of international activities. By fostering exchange between directors, deans, and internationalisation professionals, the session aims to build a shared understanding of how internationalisation can serve as a powerful enabler of educational, artistic, and organisational development in higher music education.

Barbara Preis, MUK Wien, Austria

Higher Music Education Institutions are shaped by a strong commitment to artistic excellence, specialised training and the recognition of exceptional talent. Admissions procedures, recruitment practices and professional pathways in the cultural sector often reflect this selective logic. At the same time, Higher Music Education Institutions — especially publicly funded institutions — are increasingly expected to act not only as places of artistic excellence and professional training, but also as socially responsive institutions with a Third Mission responsibility. They engage with audiences, cultural partners, communities, schools, cities and wider society. Through concerts, outreach projects, participatory formats and public events, they can create visibility and demonstrate relevance beyond the institution itself and help make the benefits of music and the arts accessible beyond established cultural and educational milieus.

Some projects receive strong public attention because they are attractive, communicable or event-based. Other initiatives may be less visible, but can have a deeper and more sustainable effect on inclusion, access, teaching and learning and student support when it comes to the challenge of implementing a long-term quality development in social responsibility. This creates a strategic and ethical tension within the institutions as some members might feel not as valued for their work. How can leaders develop a communication culture of respect, shared values and acknowledgment without favoring one side? How can they support public-facing projects while also recognising internal, less visible forms of transformation?

This co-creation space uses a World Café format to explore how higher music education institutions can develop a more reflective and value-based approach to Third Mission. Participants will discuss how artistic and educational projects are selected, supported, communicated and evaluated. The session invites leaders, teachers, administrative staff and students to examine the values that guide institutional decisions: Who benefits from a project? Whose participation is enabled? What forms of knowledge, access or social change does it create? How can institutions avoid playing visibility and sustainability against each other?

The session connects the congress theme “From Institution to Interaction” with questions of inclusion, social agency and the value of arts education. It asks how institutions can interact meaningfully with society while strengthening their internal quality culture, organisational learning and responsibility for inclusive and sustainable change. The speaker will present a few specific examples to provide thematic input.

4 World Café Guiding Questions:

• Purpose: How can higher music education institutions define their Third Mission, high level strategic responsibility, values and dimensions of impact?
• Recognition: How can leaders balance appreciation and attention between different approaches wthout setting values?
• Assessment: How can institutions work on values and categories to decribe the strenghts und opportunities of any kind of Third Mission Project?
• Learning: How can outcomes of Third Mission Projects internal be translated into sustainable organisational knowledge and social impact?

Expected outcomes and key takeaways

• a clearer understanding of Third Mission as a responsibility that includes, but goes beyond, public visibility;
• a shared vocabulary for discussing the relationship between visibility, inclusion, social impact and institutional quality;
• practical (leadership) questions for assessing the value of artistic and educational projects;
• ideas for making less visible but socially relevant initiatives more recognisable within and beyond the institution;
• awreness for avoiding internal competition, envy or resentment due to different grades of public visibility or internal institutional attention/appreciation;
• ideas of how initiatives can contribute to organisational knowledge;

Philipp Ahner; Jakobus Bracker; Julia Peters, Trossingen, Germany

Higher music education institutions are increasingly confronted with the question of how artistic excellence, social responsibility and institutional transformation can be rethought in times of ecological crisis, social fragmentation, technological change and threats to peace and democracy. Sustainability is therefore not only a matter of institutional operations or resource management, but also a question of education: Which forms of knowledge, values, skills, artistic practices and institutional cultures enable students, teachers and leaders to contribute to more just, peaceful and sustainable futures, to become global and artistic citizens?
This workshop explores sustainability in higher music education through the lens of Education for Sustainable Development. Drawing on international frameworks such as the 2020 UNESCO Roadmap for Education for Sustainable Development and the 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development, we ask how music universities and conservatoires can become learning environments for transformation. Attention will be given to the specific potential of artistic practice: listening, performing, composing, improvising and collaborating as modes of engaging with complexity, interdependence, cultural diversity and responsibility.
The workshop combines three perspectives. First, an external higher education perspective, introduced by the German Rectors’ Conference, will situate sustainability and ESD within current debates on university transformation and international policy frameworks. Second, an internal field perspective, based on a 2025 study, will examine how sustainability is currently understood and negotiated within the international landscape of higher music education. Third, participants will discuss the roles, resources, tensions and next steps for music institutions seeking to embed sustainability and ESD in curricula, artistic practice, institutional governance and international cooperation.
Guiding questions include: What specific resources do music institutions offer for transformative learning and sustainable development? How can artistic practices contribute to peace, human rights, global citizenship and ecological responsibility? Which institutional habits, excellence narratives or mobility patterns obstruct transformation? And what would be meaningful next steps for embedding ESD in higher music education without reducing artistic practice to instrumental policy goals?

with Maria Piirainen , Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland

Across Europe, higher music education institutions are being challenged to rethink their role. While artistic excellence remains at the heart of our work, students are entering a professional environment that is increasingly project-based, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and connected to wider social and cultural contexts. This raises important questions: How do we prepare students for these realities? How do we strengthen the connections between education, professional practice, and society? And what can institutions do to become active contributors to their local cultural environments rather than operating alongside them?

This workshop draws on experiences from Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Finland, where collaboration with cultural organisations, communities, and working-life partners is embedded in many aspects of music education. Through examples from curriculum development, student projects, and external partnerships, the session will explore how higher music education institutions can create learning environments that are both professionally relevant and socially connected.

A central theme of the workshop is student agency. In many institutions, students are still primarily positioned as recipients of education. At TAMK, we have increasingly sought ways for students to take active roles in designing, leading, and delivering projects together with external partners. These experiences not only support artistic development but also help students build the skills, confidence, and professional networks needed for sustainable careers.

The workshop will also examine the leadership practices that support this approach. Building meaningful partnerships and creating opportunities for student-led activity require more than individual initiatives. They depend on institutional cultures that encourage collaboration, trust, and shared responsibility. This includes finding ways for teachers, students, managers, and external stakeholders to contribute to decision-making, curriculum development, and strategic priorities.

The session is designed as an interactive workshop rather than a presentation of a single institutional case. After a short introduction to the TAMK context, participants will work in small groups to map their own institutional ecosystems, identify key relationships, and discuss where stronger connections could be developed. The aim is to exchange experiences across different national and institutional contexts and to reflect on how higher music education can respond to changing professional and societal expectations.

The workshop contributes to discussions within the Leadership and Strategy strand by addressing strategic collaboration, distributed leadership, organisational development, and long-term relevance. At the same time, it speaks to a broader question facing many institutions today: how can conservatoires remain distinctive while becoming more connected to the communities, sectors, and cultural environments they serve?

Rather than offering a model to replicate, the session aims to create a space for collective reflection and practical exchange.

Georg Hajdu, Gregory Beller, Konstantina Orlandatou,  HfMT Hamburg

Laboratories for Innovation and General-Audience Edification through the Translation of Ideas proposes a hands-on workshop on how conservatoires and research centres can translate artistic research, digital technologies and AI-related questions into public, educational and socially meaningful formats. Taking the ligeti center in Hamburg-Harburg as a working model, the session asks how a higher music education institution can move from being a place where knowledge is produced to becoming an interface where artistic practice, science, technology, health, industry and civil society actively meet.

The workshop will begin with a short impulse presentation outlining the ligeti center’s transdisciplinary approach: laboratories in which music, multimedia composition, XR, robotics, haptic systems, music and health, AI-assisted creativity and artistic research are not treated as separate domains, but as mutually translating practices. The central question is not simply how technology can be added to classical music education, but how musical thinking can help shape technological, social and public forms of knowledge. In this sense, the workshop understands “innovation” not as novelty for its own sake, but as a process of translation: from specialist knowledge to shared experience, from research prototype to artistic situation, from institutional expertise to public participation.

Following the impulse, participants will work in small groups on concrete challenges that many conservatoires currently face: How can AI be introduced in curricula without reducing artistic agency? How can digitisation support embodied, ensemble-based and performance-centred learning? How can research centres become porous spaces for audiences, schools, health partners and local communities? How can artistic research outcomes be communicated beyond academic or specialist circles without simplifying their complexity?

Each group will receive a scenario based on a typical institutional problem: designing a public-facing AI and music lab, creating a collaborative project between performers and engineers, developing an inclusive digital concert format, or transforming a research prototype into a workshop for non-specialist audiences. Using a collaborative problem-solving method, groups will identify stakeholders, map risks and opportunities, sketch a feasible format, and formulate one concrete “translation pathway” that could be adapted to their own institution.

The session will close with a collective sharing of prototypes and a synthesis of transferable principles. These may include: building laboratories as meeting places rather than service units; treating students as co-researchers and mediators; combining artistic experimentation with ethical and societal reflection; and designing technological innovation through public encounter rather than after it.

The expected outcome is a set of practical models for participants who wish to connect artistic research, AI, digitisation and classical music education with broader cultural ecosystems. The workshop is intended for teachers, researchers, artistic leaders, programme developers, students and institutional partners interested in how conservatoires can become responsive, future-oriented and socially embedded actors. By translating the spirit of the ligeti center into a participatory format, the session contributes directly to the Congress theme “From Institution to Interaction”: it invites participants not only to discuss innovation, but to test how ideas can travel between disciplines, institutions and audiences.

With Martina Kurth, HfMT Hamburg, Sonja Ostendorf (Deichtorhallen)

From Concert Hall to Cultural Ecosystem:
Concert LAB as a Model for Interdisciplinary Music Education

Concert LAB is an innovative educational learning environment at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre that enables students to design, develop and realise experimental concert formats in collaboration with professional cultural institutions.

Since its inception, Concert LAB has explored a variety of artistic approaches and themes focusing on topics such as Utopia & Nature in collaboration with the Elbphilharmonie, while others offered complete artistic freedom and culminated in the student-curated CLAB Festival. A key development was the collaboration with Communication Design students from HAW Hamburg, which introduced a stronger emphasis on interdisciplinary teamwork and collaborative creation. Since 2025, Concert LAB has been conducted in partnership with the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, one of Germany’s leading venues for contemporary art.

The project responds to a growing challenge in higher music education: preparing students not only as performers, but also as creative initiators, project managers and cultural entrepreneurs capable of shaping the future cultural landscape. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, students learn to connect classical music with contemporary artistic and societal contexts while gaining practical experience in project development, teamwork, communication, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.

In 2025 “Concert LAB x Franz Gertsch – Sound Reflections”, invited students to create a musical response to the retrospective exhibition of Swiss artist Franz Gertsch. Fifteen student musicians developed a site-specific programme that combined classical music, popular music and contemporary repertoire in direct dialogue with visual artworks. The performances transformed the exhibition space into a living encounter between image and sound, attracting new audiences and creating immersive artistic experiences beyond the traditional concert hall.

Building on this success, the 2026 edition, Concert LAB x Huguette Caland – A Musical Guided Tour, further expands the interdisciplinary approach. Students develop a curatorial concept consisting of eight thematic stations throughout the exhibition. Visitors are guided through the space by an acting student who introduces Caland’s life and artistic ideas through texts and poetry, while musicians perform works that engage with themes such as social norms, identity, rejection, loneliness and memory. The result is a hybrid format combining music, visual art, theatre and storytelling.

A central outcome of Concert LAB is the students’ learning process. Project evaluations reveal that participants developed essential competencies rarely addressed in traditional conservatoire education. Students learned to navigate uncertainty, build trust within newly formed teams, negotiate artistic decisions, assume responsibility, manage complex organisational processes and collaborate across disciplines. Particularly significant was the shift from competitive individual achievement towards collective artistic creation and shared leadership.

The presentation will demonstrate how Concert LAB functions as a laboratory for responsive and practice-oriented higher music education. It will present concrete project structures, learning outcomes and partnership models that can be adapted by other conservatoires seeking stronger connections with cultural institutions and local communities.

The case study argues that interdisciplinary, project-based learning environments empower students to become active cultural innovators. By creating new opportunities for classical music, fostering collaboration with external partners and developing audience-centred artistic formats, Concert LAB exemplifies how conservatoires can move from institution to interaction and contribute meaningfully to contemporary cultural ecosystems.

Andreas Bernhofer – Department of Music Education, Mozarteum University Salzburg Barbara Pölzleithner – Department of Music Education, Mozarteum University Salzburg Elisabeth Wieland – Department of Music Education, Mozarteum University Salzburg, Elisabeth Stoderegger (Student) – Department of Music Education, Mozarteum University Salzburg, Miriam Marinkovic (Student) – Department of Music Education, Mozarteum University Salzburg

Across Europe, institutions for higher music education are increasingly confronted with declining enrolment numbers in music teacher education programmes and growing shortages of qualified music educators (MULEM-EX 2024). At the same time, there is a need to strengthen participation, diversity, and early pedagogical engagement among young musicians. Against this background, universities are challenged to take greater institutional responsibility for the development of future music educators before students formally enter higher education.
The programme Musik-Multis: Next Generation at the Mozarteum University Salzburg presents an innovative university-based model for pre-college talent development in music education. The programme addresses musically and pedagogically interested young people aged 15–18 and creates an early pathway into the profession of music education through artistic practice, collaborative learning, mentoring, and first teaching experiences.
Building on the successful predecessor projects Musik-Multis 1.0–4.0, in which school teams independently developed and realised artistic projects, the current programme introduces a structured two-semester qualification framework. Participants engage with artistic, pedagogical, communicative, and organisational competences while simultaneously experiencing the university as an open and participatory learning environment. The programme combines project-based learning, peer collaboration, individual mentoring, and practical teaching opportunities. In doing so, it aims to foster agency, creativity, social responsibility, and identification with the field of music education.
A particular focus of the presentation lies on the role of higher music education institutions in supporting the transition from school to university. The programme demonstrates how universities can actively contribute to recruitment, orientation, and long-term professional motivation in music education. Rather than addressing artistic excellence alone, Musik-Multis: Next Generation emphasises pedagogical potential, social engagement, and collaborative musicianship as central qualities for future music educators.
The presentation will introduce the conceptual framework, curriculum design, mentoring structures, and results from the first completed cycle of the programme, while the second cycle is currently being implemented. Particular attention will be given to participants’ development of artistic-pedagogical competences, collaborative learning processes, and emerging professional orientations toward music education. In addition, the programme is accompanied by an ongoing research component investigating the development of music-pedagogical competences in adolescence within participatory and project-based learning settings. Two music education students and former participants of the programme will reflect on their role as ‘buddies’.
It will further discuss challenges and opportunities regarding institutional cooperation with schools, sustainable talent development, and the creation of inclusive pathways into music teacher education.
The session includes a short think-pair-share activity starting with a “brainwriting” introduction based on mentimeter and followed by a moderated audience discussion inviting participants to reflect on institutional responsibility, recruitment strategies, and transferable approaches to pre-college music teacher education.
By presenting this case study, the session contributes to current European discussions on institutional responsibility, participation, and future-oriented teacher education in higher music education. It offers practical insights into how universities can develop innovative outreach and qualification models that strengthen both the sustainability and the societal relevance of music education.

With Heather Bursheh, Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Palestine

Since October 2023, Gaza has been subjected to total destruction. Every university has been destroyed. Every border has been closed. The building that housed the Gaza branch of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music was struck by artillery in October 2023 and has since almost totally collapsed. Five of the branch’s qualified music teachers left Gaza during the genocide. Of those who remained, only one held a permanent contract before the war.
And yet the work continued.

The ESNCM in Gaza today has a team of young, committed musicians — school graduates, returning students, people who stepped into roles that the exodus created. They are teaching, organizing, and sustaining musical life for children and families across four satellite programs, without buildings, often without instruments, sometimes without electricity. Many of the staff and senior students have expressed directly that they want to continue to study for recognized qualifications — BA degrees, Masters degrees, pathways in community music, inclusive music education, early childhood music education, music theory. Qualifications that do not require proficiency in Western classical performance, and that can be applied to the musical traditions and community contexts in which they actually work.

The problem is structural. These staff cannot relocate — and frankly, we do not want to encourage the departure of the people who are giving the gift of music to the population that most needs it. Their internet connectivity is unreliable. Their working language is Arabic. Every institution that might have offered them a local pathway has been destroyed.
This session treats that as a design problem.

The ESNCM’s Gaza case is a sharp instance of a wider challenge. Talented music educators in conflict zones, displacement contexts, and underserved regions across the world are effectively excluded from higher music education because the infrastructure of accreditation assumes conditions — physical presence, language access, stable connectivity, Western repertoire frameworks — that do not apply to them.

We are bringing this problem to the AEC congress because if the solution exists, it is likely here. Which institutions have already built flexible, remote, or non-Western-repertoire accreditation pathways accessible to students in these conditions? What do those pathways look like, and how were they built? Where is the flexibility in European accreditation frameworks?

If the solution does not yet exist, we want to begin mapping what it would take to build it, and who in this community might contribute a piece of that work.

We are looking for people who have solved adjacent problems, or who want to. The output is a documented landscape: either pathways that exist and how to access them, or a clear picture of what would need to be built.

Session Structure (75 minutes)
• 10 minutes — Presentation of the Gaza case and its specific constraints
• 20 minutes — Structured disclosure from participants with relevant experience of flexible or remote pathways
• 30 minutes — Working time to match constraints to existing possibilities, or to map the minimum viable pathway if none yet exists
• 15 minutes — Collective documentation of what has emerged

With Justina Vaitkute, KUG Austria, Martina Delluniversita, Padova, Italy, and Jack Mahoney, EPASA

The panel, designed as a Resilience Lab, addresses the theme of future sustainability within conservatoires. It starts from the premise that while these institutions aim to train excellent artists, we must analyze which leadership strategies are necessary to ensure these artists play a fundamental role in modern society. Instead of traditional top-down leadership, the session proposes a co-design project based on two pillars:

The Premise: “We know that excellence in teaching is our main focus, but how can we protect this excellence if public funding fails because society no longer understands its value?”

The Goal: Not to replace core musical training, but to empower it by adding the ability to defend that very education through advocacy.

Methodology: Role-Play

To ensure an engaging and non-hierarchical environment, the session utilizes randomized roles. Upon entering, each participant receives a colored card randomly assigning them to a group (ensuring each table includes at least one person per category, audience composition permitting). Once divided into groups, participants choose a role (rector, student, university staff, IRC etc.), with the sole condition that they cannot choose the role they currently hold in real life. This reverse role-play aims to test the resilience of academic structures through a future-scenario simulation, fostering collaborative problem-solving.
Session Structure (75 Minutes):

1. Introduction (10 min)
The session introduces the idea that skills such as entrepreneurship, cultural diplomacy, and community building are not “alternatives” to musical training, but essential tools needed to defend it. Successful models will be cited to demonstrate how integrated leadership can redefine concert formats.

2. The Simulation: “The 2036 Sustainability Stress Test” (35 min)
A collaborative reverse role-play between institutional stakeholders.

The Scenario: “It is 2036. Your best student has no stage to perform on because the audience has lost the ability to listen, and society is fully immersed in AI. As a leader, how do you support them?” The focus shifts from institutional survival to the student’s destiny.

The Task: Mixed working groups act as Crisis Management Teams. Each table must respond to a fictitious “Ministry of Culture” (the moderators) asking: “Why should we continue to fund the training of soloists if they cannot communicate their value to society?”

The Objective: Identify 3 to 5 key points bridging educational excellence with Artistic Citizenship (e.g., hybrid concert formats, entrepreneurship toolkits, civic awareness).

3. The Debriefing: Building a “Social Contract” (20 min)
This segment focuses on how leadership can bridge the gap between institutions and civil society. Discussions center on integrating soft skills and cultural diplomacy into the curriculum—not to diminish musical quality, but to amplify its social impact.

4. Conclusion (10 min)
Summary of key takeaways and actionable insights.

The AEC Music, Society & Sustainability WG (2025-2028) Composed of: Karolien Dons – Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands (Chair of the WG) Esther Adrian – Musikhochschule Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany Joris Blanckaert – KASK & Conservatorium, Ghent, Belgium Maria Kalleitner-Huber – Mozarteum University, Salzburg, Austria Margrethe Langer Bro – The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, The Danish National Academy of Music, Odense/Esbjerg, Denmark Monica Lopez – Hochschule Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland Linda Messas – AEC Office

Collaborations between higher music and arts education institutions and societal partners such as hospitals, detention centers, community centres, care homes, and other cultural, social and health organisations are increasingly recognised as essential for enhancing the social relevance and impact of artistic education. These partnerships also create meaningful learning opportunities for students, generate social value, and strengthen institutions’ connections with their communities. Yet, while success stories are often shared, the challenges, misunderstandings, and failures that accompany such collaborations remain largely unexplored. This also raises questions of leadership: how can institutions and individuals take responsibility for partnerships when roles, expectations and working cultures differ?

This interactive workshop invites participants to examine the realities of building and sustaining partnerships with societal actors by focusing explicitly on what can go wrong. The session adopts a reflective and participatory approach that treats failure as a valuable source of learning. In this context, leadership means creating the conditions for open dialogue, mutual understanding, shared responsibility and constructive decision-making between partners. Through role-play, collective problem-solving, and facilitated discussion, participants will analyse common obstacles encountered in cross-sector collaborations and discuss strategies for overcoming them.

[The paragraph below is just for the Selction Committee, to explain what we are planning to do, but should not feature in a published abstract for participants as it would spoil the session:
The core of the session will consist of a series of short role-play scenarios based on real-life partnership situations. Volunteers from the audience will be assigned roles representing key stakeholders and asked to enact a brief meeting aimed at establishing or maintaining a collaborative project (for example: a meeting between a student, a conservatoire director, a hospital director, and a member of hospital staff). In each scenario, the artistic project itself serves as the starting point for the collaboration, shaping both the opportunities and tensions that emerge between partners. The same scenario might be repeated under changing conditions that introduce specific challenges frequently encountered in practice. These variations will expose the complexity of partnership dynamics and highlight how different contextual factors can affect communication, expectations, decision-making, and commitment.]

Following each role-play, the audience will be invited to analyse the situation, identify the causes of difficulty, and propose alternative approaches, which will lead to a modified or new scenario. This collective reflection will encourage participants to draw connections with their own institutional contexts and experiences. By exploring both structural and interpersonal dimensions of collaboration, the workshop aims to foster a deeper understanding of the leadership practices and conditions necessary for successful and sustainable partnerships.

with Claudio Allocchio, GARR and Internet2

This presentation talks about examples of networked education systems based on LoLa, MVTP and Ultrgrid (and other tools) and sets the scenario on how tochnology has successfully been working inside music education since 15 years and more. Below an abstract of LoLa and MVTP presentations.

LoLa evolves, since ever, following its users’ requeste, or at least trying the best to make true their requirements and dreams. As technology also evolves fast, LoLa tries to catch the best possible new opportunities also in this field, to become better. This short session provides an overlook on how LoLa is evolving, but also is the occasion to put your ideas and suggestions in the “wish list”.

Over the past few years, we have developed MVTP technology for low-latency audiovisual transmissions, specifically designed for distance collaboration in performing arts. MVTP devices transmit high-quality HD or 4K video and multi-channel audio with an added latency of under 3 ms. The devices are small, easy to use and completely silent. The technology has been used for many distributed performances worldwide and has won several awards. We will present the latest innovations to this technology as of 2024, which now include AES audio support and unique packet loss video error concealment with zero added latency for lossy network paths. We will present examples of how the technology has been used for recent distributed events, including connecting two choirs with over 100 singers.

Liliana S. Araujo. McGill Unviersity Canada, and Roel Hermans, Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium

with Jutta Toelle, Jan Philipp Sprick, Hamburg

Over the past fifteen years, Hamburg has developed a remarkably vibrant and innovative independent classical music ecosystem. Alongside major cultural institutions, a dense network of ensembles, cultural entrepreneurs, artistic collectives, and experimental concert initiatives has emerged, creating new approaches to artistic production, audience engagement, collaboration, and career development. Many of these initiatives have gained visibility far beyond the region and offer valuable inspiration for the future of higher music education.
At the same time, conservatoires across Europe are facing the challenge of preparing students for increasingly diverse and non-linear professional careers. While artistic excellence remains at the core of music education, graduates are expected to initiate projects, build audiences, collaborate across disciplines, navigate changing cultural landscapes, and develop sustainable professional pathways of their own. As institutions seek to respond to these developments, valuable learning opportunities may lie not only within higher education itself but also in the artistic ecosystems that surround it.
This session uses Hamburg’s independent classical music scene as a starting point for a broader discussion about the relationship between conservatoires and local cultural ecosystems. Rather than presenting a series of papers or institutional case studies, the session creates direct encounters between Congress participants and practitioners who are actively shaping new models of artistic work, cultural participation, and audience engagement.
The session will begin with a sequence of short lightning talks in which invited practitioners present one practice, strategy, or organisational model that they believe higher music education should pay closer attention to. These contributions will address themes such as artistic entrepreneurship, concert formats, community engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, audience development, and sustainable career development.
The session combines a reverse-panel approach with facilitated roundtable discussions. Following the lightning talks, participants will engage directly with practitioners and colleagues in a series of moderated conversations. The emphasis is on dialogue, exchange of experiences, and collaborative reflection rather than expert presentations. Participants will be encouraged to relate the ideas presented to their own institutional contexts and to contribute examples, challenges, and perspectives from their own practice.
Guiding questions include: Which competencies are most relevant for musicians working in today’s cultural environment? Which practices from independent artistic ecosystems can be meaningfully integrated into conservatoire curricula? How can institutions create space for experimentation, initiative, and student-led projects? What can higher music education learn from successful collaborations between educational institutions and local cultural actors? And how can conservatoires strengthen students’ capacity to shape their own professional futures?
The session concludes with a plenary reflection that brings together key observations emerging from the discussions. Rather than showcasing local success stories, the aim is to identify transferable ideas and practices that can inform curriculum development, institutional partnerships, and approaches to employability across Europe. By bringing practitioners and educators into direct conversation, the session seeks to explore how stronger connections between conservatoires and their surrounding cultural ecosystems can help prepare musicians to shape their future.

Maria Elena Romanazzi, Doctoral Researcher, Conservatory of Music of Bolzano Luigi Nannetti, Doctoral Researcher, Conservatory of Music of Castelfranco Veneto Luca Macchi, Principal Investigator (PI) PRIN Project, Conservatory of Music of Bolzano Federica Riva, PRIN Project Coordinator, Conservatory of Music of Trapani

Music Hub – Music and Social Innovation is a PRIN-AFAM research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) within the thematic area of Social Innovation, which supports social and cultural research initiatives capable of fostering behavioral change in response to contemporary societal challenges.
The project originated from a needs assessment conducted among students enrolled in Higher Artistic, Musical and Dance Education (AFAM) institutions. It develops a social and musical incubator in which students are not merely recipients of training but active agents in the design of artistic, relational, and professional practices. The methodological framework is grounded in participatory action research, combining needs analysis, collaborative artistic prototyping, format development, and impact evaluation.
Through focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, and surveys, the project maps students’ educational, relational, professional, and social needs. The findings inform a series of participatory laboratories in which students act as co-designers of innovative artistic experiences. Within these experimental environments, participants collectively develop formats that integrate original musical languages, digital accessibility technologies, and artistic mediation strategies. The outcomes include site-specific performances, participatory concerts, sound installations, interdisciplinary actions, and community-based events that connect music, care, and social transformation.
This process not only enhances students’ creative and professional agency but also reimagines the conservatoire as a social incubator where art music and contemporary artistic practices become tools for active citizenship and cultural impact. By positioning students at the center of cultural innovation, Music Hub explores new models of engagement between higher music education institutions and their surrounding communities.
The final phase of the project, scheduled after the AEC Congress, will culminate in a series of thermal-spa events. By the time of the Congress, the design, organizational planning, and site-specific adaptation of these experiences will already be underway. These events draw inspiration from the international phenomenon of Thermal Gatherings: experiential formats combining music, wellbeing, daytime sociality, immersive listening, and self-care. They are situated within the broader framework of soft clubbing, an emerging transformation of youth social practices that responds to Generation Z’s priorities, including sustainable schedules, reduced alcohol consumption, moderation, experiential quality, embodied presence, mental health, and authentic social connection.
The project also engages with current debates on cultural welfare and social prescribing. The Tuscan experience, which is promoting social prescribing as a socio-healthcare model integrating cultural activities into care pathways, provides an important reference point. If thermal treatments are already recognized as prescribable therapeutic practices, and if concerts, theatre, and the arts are increasingly acknowledged as non-pharmacological wellbeing interventions, Music Hub poses an operational question: why not imagine concerts, performances, and listening rituals within thermal environments as cultural devices for prevention, social connection, and care?
The case study will present the ongoing design process, the role of students as co-creators, the territorial partnerships involved, and the evaluation tools developed to assess participation, inclusion, wellbeing outcomes, and the potential replicability of the model across European contexts.

Dr. Peter Tuite, Royal Irish Academy of Music; Dr. Lynsey Callaghan, Royal Irish Academy of Music; Prof. Deborah Kelleher, Royal Irish Academy of Music

Conservatoire training produces highly skilled musicians, but often without a clear, shared understanding of how different dimensions of artistry interrelate. Technical skills, musicianship, interpretation, and performance are frequently taught in parallel, leaving development implicit and, at times, fragmented.

At the Royal Irish Academy of Music, we have developed The Academy Education: a competency-based framework that makes artistic development explicit, integrated, and visible across the student journey. It establishes a shared language linking curriculum, pedagogy, feedback, and assessment, anchored in RIAM’s purpose, values, and defined graduate attributes.

At its core is the RIAM Competency Quadrant, which defines four interdependent domains:

Technical Skills and Competence (Can I do it?)
Musicianship and Compositional Knowledge (How does it work?)
Repertoire and Cultural Knowledge (What does it mean?)
Performing Artistry (How do I communicate it?)

Each domain is underpinned by distinct competencies, from skills control and musical cognition to aesthetic judgment and presence. Crucially, these domains are not discrete; they are dynamically interconnected. The framework makes these relationships visible and pedagogically actionable, allowing teachers and students to understand not only what is developing, but how development in one domain shapes another.

Embedding this model across programmes has enabled:

Clearer mapping of student progression over time
Stronger alignment between teaching, curriculum design, and assessment
More precise and transparent feedback
A shared institutional language for artistic development

In doing so, it supports a shift from inherited, implicit practices toward more explicit and responsive interaction, allowing teaching to adapt to individual learners while maintaining a coherent developmental structure.

This session is designed as a structured, highly participatory workshop in which participants actively apply the framework to their own contexts. Working in small groups, participants will:

Diagnose student learning using the Competency Quadrant
Map their current teaching practices, identifying patterns, strengths, and gaps
Co-design integrated approaches to learning, teaching, and assessment

Short facilitated exchanges between groups will allow insights to circulate, ensuring both depth and cross-institutional learning.

Responding directly to the AEC Congress theme, this session offers a clear and actionable pathway from fragmentation to integration. It demonstrates how making artistic development explicit can support more connected learning, stronger institutional alignment, and ultimately, more sustainable and compelling artistic practice. Crucially, it will appeal both to students and professionals engaged in HME.

With Mattias Lundqvist, YMTE – Young Music Talents Europe

Successful progression into higher music education depends substantially on musical learning before admission. Advanced instrumental and vocal development requires an early start and sustained training, meaning that higher music education institutions rely on a diverse pre-college landscape of specialised music schools, general schools with music profiles, private tuition and other formal, non-formal and informal learning environments.

Despite this shared dependency, pre-college and higher music education are often insufficiently coordinated. Pre-college curricula vary considerably across Europe, while admission requirements and entrance examinations are generally determined independently by individual higher music education institutions. Applicants may therefore encounter unclear expectations and assessment practices that do not always reflect the full range of competences needed to succeed in higher music education.

This session presents work undertaken through an Erasmus+ project led by YMTE and AEC to strengthen curricular connections between specialised pre-college and higher music education. A central project outcome is a proposed European reference model for pre-college music competences and learning outcomes. Following the updated CALOHEX approach to describing European qualification levels, the model applies a competence-based approach to European Qualifications Framework Level 4, broadly corresponding to the completion of specialised pre-college education and preparation for entry into higher music education.

Rather than prescribing a uniform curriculum, repertoire or educational system, the model describes what students should know, understand and be able to do. It aims to respect Europe’s diverse educational traditions while providing a clearer shared language for discussing readiness for higher music education.

The session will introduce the proposed Level 4 framework and investigate whether a more standardised understanding of pre-college learning outcomes could support greater transparency and comparability in entrance examinations. Greater alignment would not require identical examinations or a single European admission standard. It could instead involve shared competence areas, clearer communication of expectations and a stronger relationship between admission criteria and first-cycle curricula.

Through silent brainwriting, participants will identify competences that are essential for admission, those already assessed and important dimensions that may currently be overlooked. Participants will then work in small groups to consider how selected Level 4 learning outcomes could be demonstrated and evaluated during an entrance process.

The groups will distinguish between competences that should be demonstrated before admission, those that could be developed during the first year, those unsuitable for traditional entrance examinations and areas where institutional or disciplinary diversity should be preserved. They will also consider whether entrance examinations could move beyond technical proficiency and prepared repertoire to include artistic imagination, aural awareness, collaborative capacity, reflection, communication and readiness to learn.

The session does not aim to create a standardised European entrance examination. It seeks to test whether a common learning-outcome framework could improve transparency, fairness and curricular continuity while respecting institutional autonomy and Europe’s diverse musical traditions.

Abra Bush, Dean, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, USA; AEC Council Member (North America); Anothai Nitibhon, President, Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, Thailand; AEC Council Member (Asia)

The challenges facing higher music education are global, but institutional responses are shaped by local cultures, artistic ecosystems, and societal needs. This interactive session brings together the AEC Council’s co-opted members for North America and Asia to explore how conservatoires and music schools are responding to change within diverse contexts. Through comparative discussion and participant engagement, the session examines responsiveness, innovation, leadership, community engagement, curriculum development, and international collaboration. Participants will explore what can be learned across regions while reflecting on their own institutional practices and opportunities for future collaboration.

Piet Menu Dean, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts Antwerp, Belgium ; David Crombie Coordinator, CYANOTYPES – Strategic Skills for Creative Futures; HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, The Netherlands

The AEC Congress theme asks how higher music education can move “from institution to interaction”: from institutional self-description towards more responsive, connected and socially relevant practices.
This workshop responds to that question through the CYANOTYPES Creative Agency Competence Framework and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp’s Open Pilot, “Co-creating a Resilient Institutional Vision”.

CYANOTYPES is an Erasmus+ Blueprint project that develops future-oriented competences for the cultural and creative industries. Its Creative Agency Framework offers a shared language for thinking about creative futures, institutional resilience and professional agency across five clusters: Collective Agency, Public Agency, Data-Driven Agency, Value-Creating Agency and Regenerative Agency. The framework is not presented in this session as a fixed checklist or assessment instrument, but as a reflective and strategic tool for institutions that want to question how curricula, policy, staff development and external partnerships prepare students for changing artistic, cultural, digital and societal realities.

The Royal Conservatoire Antwerp pilot provides a concrete case. Hosted by the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts Antwerp, the pilot focuses on co-creating a resilient policy for the next generation of students. It uses CYANOTYPES to embed future literacy and creative skills within the Conservatoire’s systems and practices, supporting artistic education and research to remain resilient, forward-looking and responsive to emerging cultural and professional realities. The pilot is designed as a participatory institutional learning space involving students, staff, alumni, creative professionals, policy makers and partner institutions.
It explicitly works with tensions that many conservatoires recognise: tradition and innovation, craftsmanship and entrepreneurship, disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary collaboration, artistic autonomy and public responsibility.

The RCA pilot aims to analyse policies, programmes and curricula, including possible skills gaps, and to integrate future-proof competences into new or renewed curricula. It uses the CYANOTYPES Framework and the Blueprinter to support analysis of self-evaluation reports and external assessments across Dance, Theatre, Music and the Educational Master. It also engages staff, students and wider stakeholders in a structured process to rethink current competences and identify which skills should be strengthened. Expected outcomes include a stakeholder analysis of perspectives on the future positioning of RCA, an overview of students’ desired skill development, a SWOT analysis of policy documents and programme reviews, and a joint action plan for strengthening future-oriented creative competences across the Conservatoire’s curricula.

The workshop will also situate the Antwerp pilot within the wider CYANOTYPES open-pilot ecosystem. Other pilot examples include a Belgian film industry company identifying existing workforce competences and stress-testing them with the CYANOTYPES Framework; a University of Arts implementing and evaluating the Digital Content Co-Creation competence within a 2 ECTS course and developing a summer school; and a National Association of Film and TV exploring how to translate CYANOTYPES competences into sectoral skillsets. The pilot process itself is iterative: pilots combine activities, workshops and training sessions, allowing for experimentation, impact reflection, refinement and deeper learning over time.

Rather than giving a conventional project presentation, the session invites participants to test the strategic usefulness of the CYANOTYPES approach for their own institutions. After the framing by Piet Menu and David Crombie, participants will work in small groups with three guiding questions:

1. Which future pressures are already reshaping our students’ artistic and professional lives?

2. Which competences are visible in our curricula, and which remain implicit or underdeveloped?

3. What would need to change if curriculum renewal were treated as an institutional conversation rather than a top-down reform?

Participants will use a light version of the CYANOTYPES lens to map institutional strengths, blind spots and possible learning directions. The session will close with a collective synthesis of transferable insights for conservatoires: how to create a shared language for future competences, how to involve students and external stakeholders meaningfully, and how to connect quality enhancement with curriculum renewal, staff development and institutional strategy.

The aim is not to offer CYANOTYPES as a ready-made solution, but to open a practical space for peer learning. Participants will leave with a clearer sense of how competence frameworks can support institutional dialogue without reducing artistic education to generic employability language.

Dr. Bilinç Ercan-Catanzaro, Vice President for Diversity and Legal Affairs Laura Louise Brunner, Officer for Equality and Diversity Management Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (HfMT Hamburg)

A Diversity Management Process at a University of Music and Drama: Experiences, Challenges and Transfer Potential
When the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT Hamburg) adopted its Diversity Management Concept in May 2024 following a multi-year participatory process, it marked far more than the introduction of a strategic document. The process originated from a fundamental question: Does a public artistic and academic institution truly reflect and reach the diversity of the society it serves?
The initiative began with a comprehensive assessment of the institution’s status quo. Diversity surveys specifically designed for the context of a music and drama university were conducted among students and staff. The results were analysed through a participatory process and translated into a holistic and intersectional diversity management concept. The findings confirmed a challenge familiar to many institutions: social diversity is not automatically reflected in higher arts education. This raised important questions about access, participation and the responsibility of public institutions to create opportunities for a broader range of people to engage in artistic education and cultural life.
This session will provide insights into the development of HfMT Hamburg’s diversity management process, present selected measures and reflect on first experiences. These include partnerships with schools and cultural education providers, diversity-oriented talent development initiatives, and the certificate programme “Inclusion@HfMT/ARTplus”, which supports talented young people with disabilities on their pathway into higher arts education.
The primary focus of the session, however, is not on presenting achievements but on discussing the challenges that accompany diversity processes in music and arts institutions. How can a broad range of stakeholders be engaged in such processes? How can scepticism, resistance or concerns about institutional change be addressed constructively? Where do tensions emerge between diversity objectives and artistic or academic freedom? And how can institutions fulfil their social responsibility while safeguarding their artistic and academic autonomy?
HfMT Hamburg understands diversity management as an ongoing learning process. The session will therefore provide an open forum for participants to share experiences, questions and perspectives. Its aim is to foster dialogue on the opportunities, limitations and practical implementation of diversity-oriented institutional development and to identify approaches that may be transferable to other music and arts institutions across the AEC network.

With Anita Jóri, Leuphana University Lüneburg; Javier Sanchez Perez, independent artist, D@RTS Project

AEC’s partner project dialoguing@rts (Horizon Europe) explores how embodied performing arts practices – music, dance, and drama – can act as catalysts for social cohesion, inclusion, and the development of cultural literacy. Recognising performance as inherently non-linguistic, social, and embodied, the project creates participatory spaces that amplify marginalized voices and foster inclusive forms of artistic and educational engagement.
A central pillar of d@rts is the development of an interactive digital platform that builds a transnational artistic community. In line with research on ludic and gamified learning environments, the “playground” component investigates how playful, game-like structures can support communication, creativity, motivation, and participation in post-digital artistic education. It enables the exploration of aesthetic strategies and 21st-century skills through the analysis of musicians, dancers, and performers engaging in online, verbal, and non-verbal dialogue.
Building on these perspectives, the session will take the form of an artistic dialogue with a contributing artist from the “playground”, offering an embodied entry point into questions of inclusion, digital participation, and artistic knowledge production. Rather than presenting a set of fixed results, the project is introduced as an evolving framework informed by artistic practice, digital experimentation, decolonial framework, and educational reflection.
Following the dialogue between Dr. Anita Jóri, postdoc researcher at d@rts, and Javier Sanchez Perez, bassist, composer, arranger and PhD candidate in music, participants will engage in facilitated co-creation activities connecting the d@rts “playground” concept and project insights to their own institutional contexts. Through small-group exchanges, they will reflect on how embodied and digital practices can reshape pedagogical approaches, collaboration models, and inclusion strategies in music higher education.
Anchored in the participatory ethos of the AEC Annual Congress 2026, this co-creation space foregrounds artistic dialogue, digital experimentation, and collaborative knowledge production as drivers for inclusive transformation in (higher) music education.

With Stefan Gies, 1000+ concerts / FAME’S Projects

Young musicians entering European higher music education to study an orchestral instrument are generally selected on the basis of their command of established classical and Romantic repertoire. This repertoire remains central throughout their studies. However, permanent orchestral positions are limited and highly competitive, while new professional opportunities are emerging through socially engaged performance, new concert formats, film, media and gaming music, crossover projects and digital production.

This session presents two European initiatives that respond to these changing realities in distinct but complementary ways: Musethica / 1000+ Concerts and FAME’S / EUCOPSY.
Musethica / 1000+ Concerts focuses on chamber music and brings high-quality performances to people and communities with limited access to traditional cultural institutions. Through intensive rehearsals and repeated performances in varied social settings, students develop artistic excellence, adaptability and new ways of communicating with audiences beyond the conventional concert hall.

FAME’S / EUCOPSY introduces students to the expanding field of symphonic performance and recording for film, media and gaming, as well as crossover repertoire and digitally supported production. Participants encounter professional studio practices, new forms of notation, collaboration with composers and producers, and working methods that are increasingly relevant in the international music sector but remain only partially represented in many orchestral curricula.

Together, the two cases show that innovation in classical higher music education is not only about new repertoire. It also concerns where music is performed, for whom, through which technologies and within which professional and societal contexts.

The session will also examine how externally provided learning opportunities can relate to formal study programmes. When students participate in high-level chamber music or orchestral courses offered by external organisations, under what conditions can these experiences be recognised within their degree? What learning outcomes, workload, supervision, assessment and quality-assurance mechanisms are required?

Following the case presentations, participants will take part in a short brainwriting exercise and a collaborative case discussion. They will identify gaps in their own institutional provision and consider a scenario in which a student requests academic recognition for participation in an external intensive programme. The discussion will contribute to a preliminary set of principles for cooperation between higher music education institutions and external providers.

The session addresses a central question for the future of classical music education: How can institutions preserve the depth and quality of instrumental training while preparing students for changing repertoires, new audiences, digital production and increasingly diverse professional careers?

Nina Deuse, Lina Marschallek, Benjamin Sprick, Benjamin Helmer, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg

Practical aesthetics is an aesthetics that can be applied. It does not exist solely as a theoretical concept or an abstract form of reflection, but always unfolds within concrete situations, relationships, and contexts of action. In this sense, it has already begun: it takes place in networks of interaction, collaboration, and perception and continually evolves through relational processes. Aesthetics appears here not as a finished work or detached observation, but as a dynamic practice of collective thinking, experiencing, and producing.
The Co-Creation Space takes this perspective as its starting point and examines the extent to which such a practical aesthetics can give rise to a sustainable form of epistemology—a practice of knowledge that centers on openness, processuality, and collective participation. At the same time, it explores how this perspective can be combined with new forms of agile institutionalization. The central challenge is thus to understand artistic research not merely as an individual project or specialized academic field, but as a collaborative space for thought and action that connects diverse actors, forms of knowledge, and dimensions of experience.
Through various artistic, performative, and discursive inputs (live composition; role-play; body-based practicies) and with the participation of doctoral candidates from the Dr. sc. mus. program at the HfMT, the question will be explored spatially and situationally: how can artistic research productively intertwine with traditional academic formats such as the doctoral program, publication, or discussion? This is not merely about supplementing existing models, but about developing hybrid forms of research in which aesthetic experience, critical reflection, and collective practice intertwine. The space itself is understood as an epistemic medium: an environment in which knowledge is not merely conveyed, but performatively produced and collectively negotiated.
In this sense, the Co-Creation Space conceives of research as an open process shaped by interaction and relationships. Here, knowledge does not emerge linearly or hierarchically, but through processes of exchange, translation, and shared imagination. Artistic methods serve as tools to make alternative perspectives visible, to experiment with new forms of collaboration, and to make social issues tangibly experiential.
The aim of the format is to outline a participatory, sustainable, and value-creating space for thought and action in which aesthetic, political, and social aspects are intertwined. The Co-Creation Space invites us to understand research as a living process of collective engagement with the world—as a practice that continuously transforms itself in dialogue with contemporary challenges and opens up new possibilities for collective action.

As a technologically optimized form of »collective intelligence«, AI prompts us to rethink and modify artistic production, organization, and reflection. The group, the community, the team – all are relational media gaining significance in the age of »algorithmic reason«. AI appears not merely as a tool, but as an infrastructural condition of collective knowledge and imagination processes, shifting established notions of authorship, creativity, and aesthetic practice.
This Co-Creation Session unfolds these reflections through the central ideas, questions, and structures of the collaborative research project ARTILACS, which is dedicated to a critically affirmative engagement between ›AI‹ and ›art‹. It presents both theoretical foundations and concrete perspectives on collaborative research, experimental methods, and new practices at the intersection of machine learning, artistic research, and media cultural techniques. Within the Co-Creation Space, we actively engage in collaborative, experimental work with AI and music.
At the core is the concept of »artistic intelligence«, reducible neither to human genius nor machine calculation, but understood as an emergent, relational, and situated practice. Concurrently, the project analyzes ›latent‹ knowledge spaces: those hidden semantic, affective, and cultural structures generated, organized, and reproduced by Large Language Models.
Together, we want to explore how these language models can be repurposed and subverted for a politics of the ›in-between‹ – beyond logics of efficiency, optimization imperatives, and techno-solutionist promises. The focus is on how AI-based systems can act as experimental media to make intermediate spaces of thought, perception, and collaboration experiential.
The exponential pace of technological development and the sheer surplus of knowledge increasingly confront us with an »epistemological overload«. Faced with this epistemic overwhelming, the goal is not to reactively reject progress, but to pivot it productively as a critical affirmation. To navigate this state methodically and unlock these intermediate spaces, the group utilizes the conceptual tool of »Digital Idiocy«. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers’ philosophical figure of the idiot, who resists the pressure of quick consensus, we understand »digital idiocy« as a deliberate deceleration within the instrumental rationality of algorithmic systems. Instead of unquestioningly accepting AI outputs as ready-made solutions, this approach refuses solution-oriented efficiency to establish a creative zero point.
As a cross-institutional collaborative project (HfMT, HAW, HFBK, and HCU Hamburg), ARTILACS aims to actively shape the AI discourse from a decidedly artistic perspective. AI is interrogated both epistemologically and technologically: What opportunities does AI open up for art, and what technological conditions does it impose? And how can artistic practice invert these relations: What conditions and demands does art place on AI?

With Oleh Kopeliuk and Bohdan Rumiantsev, Kharkiv, National Music Academy of Ukraine

Higher Music Education Institutions operate in an increasingly uncertain environment. Geopolitical disruptions and economic instability require HEIs to develop new approaches to sustainable governance and organisational resilience. Yet only a limited number of institutions have experienced a crisis of such magnitude as a full-scale war.
This session invites participants to explore the experience of Ukrainian Higher Music Education Institutions (National Music Academy of Ukraine – formerly Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music and Kharkiv I.P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts) as a practical case of crisis management and institutional adaptation under extreme conditions.
The session aims to share practical knowledge gained through decision-making in conditions of uncertainty — including successful practices, institutional limitations, mistakes, and solutions developed while maintaining educational continuity, international cooperation, and institutional resilience.
The session will begin with a brief introduction to the Ukrainian higher education system and the development of Higher Music Education prior to 2022. Particular attention will be given to institutional changes that took place over recent decade.
Against this background, participants will reflect on a key question: which elements of the system proved resilient in times of crisis, and which revealed structural vulnerabilities?
The session will then examine the major challenges faced by Ukrainian music HEIs following the outbreak of the full-scale war: ensuring continuity of education, disruption of established governance structures, interruptions in energy supply and access to infrastructure, accelerated transition to digital environments, maintaining international partnerships, and supporting students and staff.
Special attention will be given to the role of European frameworks and partnerships in strengthening institutional resilience — including the Bologna Process, the AEC, Erasmus+, international university networks, and institutional cooperation between Music HEIs.
At the same time, the session aims not only to reflect on the Ukrainian experience as a unique case, but as an opportunity to discuss how “lessons” learned may be adapted across different institutional and national contexts. We believe that most crises, regardless of their origin, confront institutions with similar leadership challenges: ensuring continuity, maintaining communication, reallocating resources, making decisions under constrained conditions, sustaining trust within academic communities etc.
Particular attention will also be paid to how crisis acted as a catalyst for accelerated institutional transformation. Participants will discuss evolving governance models, the expansion of digital coordination tools, the reconsideration of internationalisation strategies, and the development of resilience mechanisms that would normally require significantly longer periods to emerge.

Jennie Henley RNCM, UK, member of DEI panel

Research has demonstrated that, in England, despite numerous government initiatives and interventions spanning two decades, the same barriers to music education still exist today as they did 20 years ago (Henley and Barton 2022). These barriers are multiple and varied, and relate to issues such as equity of opportunity, geographical and transport barriers, low value of the arts in schools, lack of adequate teacher education and high-quality professional development, lack of collaboration and transition across different organisations that make a coherent pathway to Higher Education opaque.

Interventions to address these barriers often refer to the idea of a pipeline. However, although notions of a pipeline into Higher Education are useful in some ways, they might also imply a single, fixed pathway, which lies in tension with contemporary understandings of learning and progression. This in itself creates a barrier – there is not one pipeline, and a singular approach does not fit all. Rather, the conservatoire has a responsibility to encourage and value multiple pathways and provide opportunities for those who do not fit the traditional path.

In response to research and critiques of approaches that take a singular approach, the RNCM’s Access and Participation Plan lays out a strategy for creating meaningful change through an inclusive pedagogical approach that combines musical development, social development and metacognitive development. Underpinned by educational research (Henley 2026), RNCM Engage activities are designed to be different, placing young people’s individual needs at the heart.

A key part of the strategy is workforce development, on the basis that high-quality professional development raises the quality of teaching, leading to a rise in quality of learning. The approach to workforce development at the RNCM is threefold: providing pedagogical training for RNCM students to develop the skills to work inclusively in music education; providing specific education qualifications and professional development courses to develop musicians’ and teachers’ skills, and side-by-side mentoring of teachers in practice as part of RNCM Engage activities to build their confidence in leading inclusive music education.

To understand the contribution that RNCM Engage activities make to young people’s development and transition to the next phase of learning, a research programme has been designed using Contribution Analysis as its methodology. The methodology involves 6 iterative phases starting with a theory of change, moving through collecting and interrogating evidence against that theory of change.

This paper will present a case study demonstrating how the RNCM Engage strategy, pedagogy and methodology takes holistic approach that integrates teacher education with music education work, ensuring that young people have access to both the necessary activities and quality of teaching needed to progress to conservatoire.

IN.TUNE University Alliance

How can higher music education institutions develop meaningful joint learning opportunities across borders without having to start from scratch each time? In this workshop, the IN.TUNE alliance will share its current work on developing a methodology for new educational formats in a transnational context, using joint online courses as a concrete example.
IN.TUNE brings together eight higher education music institutions across Europe. Within the alliance, we are exploring how structural transnational cooperation can be initiated, developed, tested, and implemented in ways that are useful for students, teachers, and institutions. Our aim is to create flexible learning opportunities and alternative learning pathways that respond to changing artistic, professional, and societal realities.
Rather than presenting a finished model or a single “right” way of working, this session will open up the process behind our methodology. We will guide participants through the key steps we have identified so far in developing joint educational formats: from the first idea and shared aims, to curriculum design, institutional alignment, piloting, and implementation.
A specific focus will be placed on the use of CALOHEX, the European-level subject-specific qualification framework for the arts developed by the Tuning Academy. We will introduce how this framework has supported our thinking around learning outcomes, curriculum coherence, and the shared language needed for collaboration between institutions. Using the example of IN.TUNE joint online courses, we will show how CALOHEX is being embedded in our wider methodology for joint educational formats.
The workshop is intended as a space for exchange, not a formal presentation of best practice. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own institutional contexts, discuss what kinds of transnational educational formats might be valuable for them, and consider which steps, tools, and questions could support such development. By sharing our experience, including what we are still learning, we hope to offer practical starting points and help colleagues avoid some of the complexity of beginning from zero.
In a sector where joint educational formats in higher music and arts education are still relatively rare, IN.TUNE hopes to contribute models, questions, and shared resources that can inspire further experimentation across Europe.

CUKSN (Conservatoires UK Student Network)

What happens when you bring together the student union presidents of most conservatoires in the UK, and simply let them talk to each other?

The answer, it turns out, is something far more powerful than a shared governance structure. It becomes a family. A support network. A space where the people navigating one of the most demanding and isolating roles in higher education (the sabbatical student officer) can find each other, sustain each other, and grow together.

CUKSN, the Conservatoires UK Student Network, was built on the idea that student voices across UK conservatoires deserved a shared platform. What it has become is something bigger: a working model of student-led leadership that helps develop the next generation of leaders in music, dance, dramatic arts, and higher education. Not through a formal plan, but simply by bringing people together regularly and with purpose.

This session invites delegates and students to look at CUKSN not as a story about student representation, but as a model that other institutions could realistically build. It has grown from the ground up, with almost no institutional funding, held together entirely by the commitment of its members. As conservatoires across Europe look for ways to be more open, more connected, and more people-centred, CUKSN offers a simple answer: start small, stay consistent, and trust students to lead.

The session will bring together all available CUKSN Presidents from across the UK, with three to four taking an active role as panellists, each speaking from their own experience: what the network has meant to them personally, what it has made possible professionally, and what they think it shows the wider sector. The session will be held and directed by the CUKSN Chair or a senior President, who will guide the discussion and keep the space on track. This is not a polished success story. It is an honest look at a network that is still growing and still figuring out what it can become.

The second half of the session uses a Fishbowl format to turn the usual dynamic around. Rather than students presenting to senior leaders, participants are invited into the circle to reflect on their own institutions: what already exists for their students, what would make something like CUKSN difficult to build, and what they might take back with them. This part of the session will also be facilitated by the Chair or senior President, ensuring the conversation remains focused and that all voices in the room have space to contribute. The aim is not to offer a blueprint but to open a conversation, one that continues well beyond the session.

The session sits within Strand 3, looking at shared leadership and how decisions can be made collectively. But what we hope for is as much about feeling as it is about structure. We want every person in the room (whether a principal, a dean, an international officer, or a student) to leave believing that something like this is possible. That the right conditions can be created. And that students, given trust and the right support, are more than capable of building something remarkable.
CUKSN exists because a small group of people believed it should. This session exists to ask: where else could it?

Prof. Dr. Martin Zierold, HfMT Hamburg / Institut für Kultur- und Medienmanagement (KMM); programme director, Cultural Leadership Fellowship Program — session lead / impulse Marlene Troidl, HfMT Hamburg / KMM; programme manager, Cultural Leadership Fellowship Program — impulse Tobias Rempe, General Director (Intendant), Konzerthaus Berlin — voice from leadership practice (to be confirmed) Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Sprick, President, HfMT Hamburg — fishbowl opener (tbc) Prof. Bilinç Ercan, Vice President for Diversity and Social Responsibility, HfMT Hamburg — fishbowl opener (tbc)

Whether art succeeds depends on leadership — far more than the field likes to admit. Someone decides what an orchestra programmes, who gets hired, which risks are worth taking. Over time, choices like these determine whether an institution still matters to the city around it. They are leadership calls, inward and outward, and they are made constantly. Yet leadership in the arts is rarely studied on its own terms. Where it is taken seriously, it is usually imported from business, as if running a theatre were a variant of running a company. We start somewhere else: cultural leadership in our view is first and foremost a practice of shaping relationships — interaction at its core.

Music universities are well placed to take this up: they sit close to the artistic work and to the people most likely to end up leading in the field. The HfMT Hamburg has form here — it was the first university in Germany to offer a cultural management programme, and it is again the first to initiate, with public and philanthropic partners, a part-time scholarship programme for people already in leadership roles in cultural organisations: the Cultural Leadership Fellowship Program, now in its third edition.

The session shares these approaches and, more importantly, opens them up around three questions:
1) What understanding of leadership does the field actually need — and how can it be taught and learned?
2) What role can and should music universities play in qualifying professionals for cultural leadership?
3) What happens when an institution turns its thinking about leadership back onto itself, and lets it shape how the university is run — and what does that take?

Short impulses open the floor: from Prof. Martin Zierold (co-initiator of the programme and expert in cultural leadership) and Marlene Troidl (programme manager), together with a voice from leadership practice in the field — Tobias Rempe, General Director of the Konzerthaus Berlin (to be confirmed). They stay deliberately brief and then open into a fishbowl: rather than presenting from the front, members of the university’s leadership (Jan Philipp Sprick / Bilinç Ercan) open the conversation and establish it as a genuinely open exchange.

With Stella Mendonça Ziegler, MUSIARTE, Mozambique

From Institution to Impact: Music Education that Matters

As Higher Music Education Institutions seek to respond to rapidly changing social, cultural and professional realities, there is an increasing need to rethink the role of the conservatoire. Beyond training skilled performers and educators, music institutions are being called upon to become active contributors to their communities, cultural ecosystems and broader societal development. This shift is particularly relevant in contexts where access to arts education remains limited and where cultural participation can serve as a powerful driver of inclusion, empowerment and social cohesion.

This session presents the experience of Conservatório MUSIARTE in Mozambique as a case study of how a music institution can move from being primarily a place of instruction to becoming a platform for interaction, engagement and social impact. Founded with the mission of expanding access to high-quality music education, MUSIARTE has developed initiatives that connect artistic learning with community engagement, cultural heritage, youth empowerment, environmental awareness and international collaboration.

Drawing on examples from community performances, educational outreach programmes, interdisciplinary projects, youth leadership initiatives and partnerships with public institutions, embassies, cultural organisations and international networks, the session will explore how music education can contribute to broader social objectives while maintaining artistic excellence. Particular attention will be given to how students are encouraged to engage with real-world challenges, develop transferable skills and understand their role as active cultural citizens.

The presentation will highlight practical strategies for integrating community engagement into educational programmes, creating meaningful partnerships beyond the conservatoire, and preparing students for diverse and sustainable professional pathways. Participants will also be invited to reflect on how institutions can measure success not only through artistic achievement, but also through educational, social and cultural impact.

In line with the Congress theme, “From Institution to Interaction,” the session will emphasise the importance of building responsive and connected institutions that are capable of adapting to local needs while participating in global cultural dialogues. It will offer a perspective from the Global South, contributing to a richer and more diverse conversation about the future of Higher Music Education and the different ways institutions can engage with their communities.

The session will be highly participatory. Following a brief presentation of the MUSIARTE experience, participants will engage in small-group discussions using a World Café format to identify opportunities, challenges and innovative approaches for strengthening the relationship between music education institutions and society. Through collaborative problem-solving, participants will share experiences from their own contexts and co-create practical recommendations for embedding community engagement, cultural relevance and social responsibility into music education.

By bringing together perspectives from different countries and institutional contexts, the session aims to foster dialogue, mutual learning and new partnerships. Participants will leave with concrete ideas and tools for enhancing the relevance of their institutions, supporting students’ development as engaged professionals, and strengthening the contribution of music education to society in an increasingly interconnected world.