The Civic Conservatoire

Rosie Perkins (Royal College of Music)

This presentation problematises what it means to be a civic conservatoire. Starting with the idea of a ‘civic university’, I first explore how this translates to the conservatoire sector, suggesting that we can constructively disturb our normal practices through questioning, dialogue, and amplification of hidden voices. Drawing on Spiro and Sanfilippo’s (2022) concept of ‘musical care’, I then present a way of thinking about the civic conservatoire that places musical care at the heart of the institution. Bringing this to life, I share case study examples of integrating new programmes and initiatives into the conservatoire with a view to enhancing mutually its civic potential and the student learning experience.      

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Rosie Perkins is Professor of Music, Health, and Social Science at the Royal College of Music London (RCM). Part of the Centre for Performance Science, Rosie is a leading researcher in the area of music and mental health, where her research investigates two broad and intersecting areas: how music and the arts support individual and societal wellbeing, and how to optimise musicians’ wellbeing and career development. Rosie’s research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Arts Council England, British Academy, Dutch Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and has featured in a wide range of international journals and press. Alongside research and knowledge exchange, Rosie teaches across the RCM’s undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programmes and is the Programme Leader for the RCM’s groundbreaking MSc in Performance Science. Rosie is an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London and a Fellow of AdvanceHE (FHEA) and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). In 2019, Rosie was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music (HonRCM), and in 2025, she became an Affiliate Researcher with the Jameel Arts and Health Lab.

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Higher music education as site of public pedagogy

Tuulikki Laes (Sibelius Academy) 

The relationship between higher music education (HME) and society is continually negotiated, with recent European scholarship framing HME actors as civic, artistic, and socially engaged professionals. Building on these discussions, this presentation explorespublic pedagogy as a lens for rethinking HME beyond performativity, focusing instead on its interruptive potential in the public sphere. Drawing on Biesta’s notion of public pedagogy “in the interest of publicness,” I examine how HME can open spaces for becoming public without compromising the political. Examples from the ongoingresearch project Performing the Political (2023–2027) illustrate how teachers and students engage with socio-political responsibilities through reflections and artistic-pedagogical interventions.

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Tuulikki Laes is a University Researcher and Lecturer at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, and holds a Title of Docent in Musicology at the University of Helsinki. Currently, she is an Academy Research Fellow appointed by the Research Council of Finland (2023-2027), leading the research project “Performing the Political: Public Pedagogy in Higher Music Education.” Her research focuses on educational democracy, inclusion, policy and politics as well as systems thinking in(higher) music education. In 2018, she was a visiting scholar at IIASA (The International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) in Vienna, Austria. Her latest publications include “The Transformative Politics of Music Education” (Routledge, 2025), co-edited with Gert Biesta and Heidi Westerlund. She also serves as Chair of the ISME Commission on Policy: Culture, Education and Media, and is a member of several other research and policy networks.

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The "[hic]cups" of Committed Higher Music Eduation: crit[ic]s, cyn[ic]s, scept[ic]s

Irina Kirchberg (Université de Montréal)

In 2022, as part of its institutional strategy renewal, a prestigious French conservatory published a document emphasising the importance of integrating Music Mediation into the curriculum for all its students. From the very first lines, the text referred to the legal framework governing this transformation, which formed an integral part of the multi-year agreement between the conservatoire and the state. The authors’ rhetorical strategy aimed to defuse any opposition to the project. Prior to drafting this text, the process of consulting teachers and students (through interviews, questionnaires, and consultation workshops) had indeed generated significant tension within the institution.

Research conducted in 2022 highlights the challenges and obstacles associated with projects aimed at initiating a socially oriented shift in higher music education institutions. Reflecting on the hiccups experienced during this consultation process invites consideration of the arguments that must be developed to support the transformation of these institutions towards a more socially committed and excellently engaged model.

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Irina Kirchberg, musicologist and sociologist, is the executive director of the Centre for Innovation and Applied Research in Arts and Social Engagement (Artenso). She produced the first Panorama des pratiques de médiation de la musique au Québec (2020), edited an issue of the Revue musicale de l'OICRM (2020) and an issue of Intersections (2025) dedicated to music mediation. In partnership with the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal, the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, and the COnservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, she recently produced a competency framework for the field. In Montréal,  Irina Kirchberg co-directs the specialized higher education diploma (DESS) in Music mediation  and the Etude Partenariale sur la Médiation de la Musique (EPMM). She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Music Mediation.

 

All lectures will be in English