How the conductor, mdw professor, and musicologist Johannes Wildner is making active and reflective use of the pandemic, and why he views this crisis as an opportunity.

When studying abroad, students typically meet lots of new people from all over the world, explore their host institutions, get to know the cultural life of a new city, go on outings, go to parties … in short: they gather new and memorable impressions and experiences. Despite the pandemic, last year at the mdw featured lots of student mobility.

Therapists Marion Herbert, Evelyn Jahn, and Alexander Parte provide insights into their work, point out the themes that dominated the COVID crisis, and reveal what can help us (better) deal with such situations.

This successful singer and actor has been studying Cultural Management at the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) since 2019. During the COVID-19 crisis, he employed his newly acquired knowledge in order to independently produce a solo CD as well as an online concert.

One’s strength and flexibility can be trained and developed, superiors can lead in a way that builds resilience, and organisations themselves need to be culturally and structurally stable and agile in order to deal with present and future challenges.

Be it a concert for hospitalised cancer patients, a neighbourhood forum in a newly developed residential area, or making music together in a park: community outreach can take on all kinds of shapes.

And for around 20 years, now, we’ve used the terms “applied” or “engaged ethnomusicology” to also imply “outreach”. It has hence long been a central point in ethnomusicology (rather than being a recent development, like in other disciplines) to ensure that research has a reciprocal impact on society—an impact that, in turn, flows once again into research findings.

Dietmar Flosdorf, Axel Petri-Preis, and Rineke Smilde teach at the Department of Music Education Research, Music Didactics and Elementary Music Education (IMP). mdw Magazine spoke with them about the community work they pursue.