From there to here… 30 years inside the AEC
Happy 70th birthday, dear AEC!!! I am so proud to have been a part your story…
I attended my first AEC Congress in Lyon in November 1992. I was one of 2 women participants in attendance, and the only exchange I had with the then President, Sir John Manduell, concerned his admiration for my shoes! Happily, much has changed since then, and the journey to 2023 bears witness to both the organisation’s vitality and that of the higher music education sector.
In the early 90s, with the advent of the EU-funded Erasmus programme, our burning questions centred on developing a coherent exchange system, exploring how to determine student levels in conservatoires, and the duration and validation of such exchanges. It is hard to imagine now how profoundly challenging this was: our educational systems were vastly different, had various funding mechanisms, and degree titles were as numerous as the number of schools, although until 2004, there were only 15 EU member states. Special programmes existed to support countries from Eastern Europe, and several of these institutions took leadership roles in initiating exchanges. But the fact was, we knew very little about each other. Caprices d’Europe, an AEC-led study of first cycle violin training across Europe initiated by then Secretary General Marc-Olivier Dupin, constituted one of the first attempts to collect and share information. By the late 90s, joint meetings of the two Sibelius and Polifonia networks, uniting European conservatoires to promote Erasmus exchanges, allowed us to enlarge our perspectives.
It was the 1998 Bologna declaration – which I learned about at our annual international relations meeting in September 1999 – that struck me as a game-changer. I urged the AEC to discuss it at the ’99 Bucharest Congress – and while at the time, there was much resistance to the concept, it did lead to the AEC’s successful application for EU funding to explore its implications for HMEI. With Jeremy Cox of the Royal College of Music, I co-chaired the dedicated working group from 2001-2004. With representatives from Spain, Hungary, Norway, Switzerland, Britain, France, and Germany, we struggled as to what might constitute a coherent, Europe-wide approach to 1st and 2nd cycle training. We explored quantitative and qualitative approaches, finally settling on the development of learning outcomes. This seems self-evident today, but it constituted a sea change at the time! Much of our work was ambassadorial, reassuring members that Bologna would indeed constitute an opportunity while preserving cultural specificities… To this end, I participated in workshops across Europe. English was not the lingua franca it is today, and our working group shared our work across Europe in our many languages.
Across the university disciplines grappling with these issues, the AEC approach was considered outstanding. Music was chosen as one of six disciplinary fields to receive major EU funding to pursue aspects of Bologna that ranged from pre-college to 3rd cycle training, as well as professional development. With Rineke Smilde of the Prince Claus Conservatoire, I co-chaired a new working group exploring ways in which the music profession was evolving (2004-2007). Enlarging our conversation to include stakeholders from such organisations as the European Music School Union, International Federation of Musicians, or the Association of British Orchestras, we looked at trends in the profession, the relevance of learning outcomes, new (or rare) competencies, made site visits and case studies, explored alumni policies and the free movement of musicians across Europe. Engaging professionals in conversation was to become yet another trademark of the AEC.
I subsequently chaired an AEC working group dedicated to Entrepreneurship in Music, including conservatoire representatives and industry professionals (2011-2014). Mapping entrepreneurial training across five European regions, sharing examples of good practice, exploring how best to train for entrepreneurship within conservatoires, and concluding with a “boot camp” in which students shared and developed their artistic and entrepreneurial visions, the project emphasized the musician as an actor of her own destiny. The importance of the student voice – now considered indispensable, was only beginning to be felt.
From 2008 to 2014, as AEC Council member and Vice-President, I better understood how remarkably broad and all-encompassing AEC activities had become, working across artistic disciplines and in dialogue with the music industry, incorporating lifelong learning processes, imagining joint curricular programmes, developing instruments for music-specific external quality assurance, and more recently, tackling issues of power, diversity, and inclusion. Positioning itself in a global context, the AEC collaborated with relevant sister organisations from North America to Asia.
I have recently been privileged to chair the PRIhME (Power Relations in Higher Music Education) stakeholder assemblies (2021-2023), tasked with developing policy recommendations relative to power relations using a form of deliberative democracy. Students, teachers, and staff from every corner of Europe have been empowered to formulate meaningful recommendations in the most emblematic of all AEC projects. Cultural stereotypes have been erased as participants discover that while cultural contexts and ways of functioning differ, power relations and hierarchies of power are universal. Implementing training for students, teachers, and staff, creating, and communicating clear and transparent policies, and fostering networks of care: these recommendations come with a clear mandate to make sustained dialogue both within conservatoires and with industry stakeholders a hallmark of our institutions, a sort of AEC mantra.
Over these last decades, we have come to better know and understand one another, enlarging the scope of our discussions through a diverse and inclusive base. As so eloquently stated at the conclusion of the Strengthening Music in Society (SMS) project in 2021, musicians are indeed “makers” in our societies. The AEC has grown immeasurably, successfully informing, collaborating, debating, and innovating so that our European higher music education institutions can hold pride of place within evolving educational, societal, and artistic landscapes.
Finally – it is the friendships nourished across borders over decades which have made the AEC the remarkable organisation it is today. So many of those I met 20 and 30 years ago count among my nearest and dearest friends.
Thank you, dear AEC, for allowing me to grow and learn at your side in friendship, and bravo!
Gretchen Amussen
Gretchen Amussen served as Director of External Affairs & International Relations at the Paris Conservatoire from 1992-2018 and currently works as an independent consultant.
