The Pop and Jazz Platform (PJP) Working Group is in charge of the organisation of the AEC Annual Pop and Jazz Platform meeting. This event aims to promote and support higher education in popular music and jazz in the widest definition of those terms. Both popular music and jazz include a variety of subgenres and styles as well as specific performance, learning and cultural practices. However, we do believe that popular music and jazz as overall music forms are closely related through a set of common characteristics.

PJP WG members

The Working Group is formed by active individuals in the relevant field of specialization within AEC member institutions. The AEC Pop and Jazz Platform (PJP) Preparatory Working Group is part of the AEC – Empowering Artists as Makers in Society project (AEC-ARTEMIS, 2022-2025). More information on the role of the PJP Working Group within the project can be found here.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: United in Diversity

Preamble

Higher Music Education (HME) in Europe has changed over the last decades. Since broad international meeting grounds for the HME institutions often were on an executive level, often recruited from classical music, new programmes tended to be underrepresented. The establishment of the PJP in 2005 was to create a European meeting ground for these programmes within the membership institutions of the AEC.
Specific issues that concern certain programmes need to be addressed separately for the time being. Some of them go to the core of how music is made, earned and taught. In addition, we see an increase in genre diversity in the HME institutions.

Aims and profile

The goal of the PJP is to contribute to a better understanding, collaboration, and diversity within music and higher music education.

The PJP discusses and promotes educational, pedagogical, musical, and professional issues on the basis of the particular expertise and experience the PJP community possesses.

The PJP supports the development of jazz, pop, folk, world music, and related programmes in the AEC’s membership institutions.

The PJP promotes diversity in HME.  Genre diversity in HME may be a complex issue and pose challenges for the institutions. Other ways of categorising the field than by genre are possible, for example by differences and similarities in teaching/learning and in musical and artistic processes. The PJP will therefore in particular stimulate the discourse on the concept of genre, genre diversity, teaching and learning processes, self-perception and identities.

PJP organises meetings on a regular basis for these programmes in AEC membership institutions addressing relevant issues, at the same time providing a meeting ground for networking and the sharing of experiences among the programmes.

Being a platform within the AEC the PJP subscribes and adheres to the Vision and Mission of the AEC.