Members of the AEC Diversity, Inclusion and Gender Equality (DIGE) Working Group delivered a workshop on Wednesday, 20th March at the Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana. The workshop, titled ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Higher Music Education: An Invitation for Action’ was organised in the frame of the AEC – Empowering Artists as Makers in Society project (ARTEMIS, 2022-2025), co-funded by the European Union, and served as a preamble to the AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) 2024.
The workshop gathered 30 participants, including managers, teachers, students, researches and administrative staff from the following Higher Music Education (HME) institutions in Europe, all of them Active members of the AEC:
- Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana
- Academy of Music, University of Zagreb
- Academy of Music, University of Sarajevo
- Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Tartini di Trieste
The workshop was aimed at sharing experiences, identifying good practices, and collaboratively envisioning institutional change in relation to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in HME, and provided a unique opportunity for participants to discuss how to build and maintain equitable and inclusive practices, and how such practices can support previously excluded individuals, minority groups and communities.
Moreover, the workshop presented a resource package developed by the DIGE Working Group, through which they welcome all AEC members institutions to explore, discuss and implement practices fostering DEI in HME. The publication contains 5 chapters, all of them grounded on the notion of resistance, which can emerge when changes are envisioned and implemented in the institutions. The resource package can be downloaded here.
The workshop kicked-off with an introduction by all facilitators (Katja Thomson, Karine Hahn, Steven Faber and Alfonso Guerra), followed by a short round of presentations. Then, participants were encouraged to pair up and discuss a set of questions, including: What kinds of diversities can you recognise in your institution?
Later on, participants were allocated to three different circles distributed in a world café setting, each of them facilitated by a member of the Working Group, with the objective to discuss in depth the following topics: change; resistance; and action. The world café ended with a short round by the facilitators sharing the key elements discussed in each of the circles.
The workshop ended with a free discussion for reflection and calling for action: What kind of concrete action for change can you take when you get back to your conservatoire? Participants were encouraged to not only consider the question at an institutional level but also in their own everyday work.
Upcoming workshops
At the last AEC Annual Congress and General Assembly in November 2023 in The Hague, the following institutions were announced to host the next Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Higher Music Education: An Invitation for Action workshops. Other opportunities for applying to host the workshop may arise in the near future, notably in the frame of a new potential Creative Europe co-funded project for European Networks:
- 16/05/2024 – Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig
- 03/09/2024 – Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, Ireland
- 07/10/2024 – Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore
- 16/05/2025 – Municipal Conservatory of Pylaia-Chortiatis in Panorama-Thessaloniki
For further information, please contact Alfonso Guerra, DIGE Working Group Coordinator at alfonsoguerra@aec-music.eu.
