WP8. Fostering diversity, inclusion and gender equality

Objectives Work Package 8

⇒ Shaping and implementing fair, inclusive, diverse and gender equal frameworks in HMEIs

Meet the AEC Diversity, Inclusion and Gender Equality (DIGE) Working Group

Meet the AEC Gender Equality and Non-discrimination Mainstreaming Task Force (TF3)

Work Package 8 (WP8) addresses the need to help HMEIs accommodate a plurality of backgrounds, cultures, access capabilities, artistic paradigms and aspirations. Given the specificities of the HME sector, such as high-level entry requirements to access it and 1-to-1 lessons resulting in a strong relationship between student and mentor, exploring issues such as gender, ethnicity, disabilities, and socio-economic backgrounds as well as power relations is crucial for the sustainability of the sector. AEC will take care of the topic’s complexity in all its multi-faceted aspects, i.e: promoting cultural and educational offers that meet the diversity of individual needs and preferences, but also the diversity of music genres and traditions; fostering inclusivity towards people with different cultural, social and physical requirements, needs and possibilities, but also towards differing cultures and traditions in HMEIs on an equal footing; facilitating gender equality through targeted measures, such as providing mentoring programs for young female artists, but also through measures addressing equality issues related to origin, ethnicity, cultural background, etc.

  1. Enabling HMEIs to enhance diversity, inclusion and equality within their student and staff population

The Diversity, Inclusion & Gender Equality (DIGE) WG, building on the work completed in the AEC-SMS project (2017-2021) by the WG on Diversity, Identity and Inclusiveness will:

  • Develop guidelines to assist HMEIs in defining strategies and developing policies to enhance diversity, gender equality and inclusion, including of socially and culturally marginalised groups and of people with disabilities
  • Provide workshops to specific institutions in order to assist them further in implementing these policies and strategies. 

Within the DIGE WG, 2 individuals will form the Gender Equality & Non-Discrimination Mainstreaming Task Force. They will bring specific expertise regarding gender equality to the WG and will at the same time be responsible for promoting gender equality and non-discrimination mainstreaming within the project itself.

  1. Empowering HMEIs to deal with power relation issues

The DIGE WG will:

  • Carefully follow the results of the assemblies held during the PRIhME project (Power Relations in higher Music Education, 2020-2023), i.e. an academic publication containing best practices and findings, as well as standards, resolutions and recommendations on how to deal with power relations within HMEIs
  • Encourage institutions to implement the PRIhME standards and to set up a reliable system to prevent power relations, deal with them and monitor them in a transparent and confidential way.
  1. Opening up HMEIs to diverse traditions and genres

The DIGE WG will explore:

  • How the mutual understanding and respect of cultures can be improved in HMEIs and the intercultural competences of students and teaching staff strengthened
  • How diversity can be enhanced by making curricula more flexible and tailored to the needs of individual students
  • How the institutional framework can enhance different musical traditions beyond Western classical music to develop and live their own cultures of teaching, assessing and performing within the HMEIs.
  1. Fostering access and diversity of educational offers in music

The DIGE WG members will bring their expertise to the SCHEME group in order to explore together which long-term opportunities could be developed to facilitate the access of less advantaged people to music education.

  1. Supporting emerging female artists by contributing to 2 mentorship programmes

The AEC Office and the DIGE WG will identify in the AEC network and bring together: