Call for Contributions
Music Mediation and Community Music are two vibrant and multifaceted concepts that have gained increasing prominence in musical life over the past decades. With their shared commitment to making music accessible and meaningful for diverse audiences and communities, both fields have initiated substantial transformations in musical life including developments in (higher) music education and the concert industry.
Because of their proximity, the two fields are frequently perceived as closely related. Both emphasize access to music through inclusive experiences. Moreover, they share a range of similar practices such as participatory forms of making music, collaborative creation, new performance settings, and the reconfiguration of relationships between musicians and audiences. At the same time, they emerge from distinct historical, political, cultural, and institutional contexts, which continue to shape their discourses and self-understandings. One could also say that they represent two paradigms that form two positions along a continuum: Music Mediation has often been framed primarily within an artistic paradigm, whereas Community Music has historically foregrounded a social paradigm. This becomes clearly visible when looking at the development of the two concepts, which of course cannot be presented exhaustively here:
Community Music is strongly rooted in Anglo-American traditions. Its historical foundations can be traced to the Settlement Movement and the reformist impulses of the Progressive Era, and later to the countercultural Community Arts movement in the United Kingdom. Emerging as a grassroots movement with explicit social and political ambitions, Community Music has consistently foregrounded participation, empowerment, and social change through collective music-making practices that often draw on popular, folk, and locally embedded musical traditions. In the past decades Community Music has spread into different national and cultural contexts. Music Mediation, by contrast, developed as a concept and field of practice primarily within continental European contexts – particularly in German- and French-speaking regions – and later also in francophone Canada. Comparable practices, however, have emerged in a variety of international contexts. In particular, the education and outreach work of orchestras and concert halls in the United Kingdom played an important role in shaping participatory and dialogical approaches to music – often facilitated by music leaders though creative-collaborative workshop environments – that later informed discourses on Music Mediation. Influenced by reform pedagogy and cultural-political movements aimed at democratizing concert life, the field initially emerged largely from within classical concert institutions. Its early focus lay on educational outreach, audience development, and cultural access, often working in close proximity to orchestras, opera houses, and concert halls.
Over the past three decades, however, both fields have undergone comparable developments. Processes of academization have led to the establishment of university courses, modules, and specialized degree programs. Alongside this institutionalization, research activities have intensified, generating theoretical frameworks, critical reflection, and methodological innovation as well as dedicated research networks, journals, and conferences. Music Mediation and Community Music have thus become increasingly visible not only as fields of practice but also as scholarly domains. However, collaboration between the two fields within higher music education remains surprisingly limited. Structural dynamics – emerging areas often compete for visibility and resources – may partly explain this. Linguistic divides also play a role: while Community Music scholarship is predominantly published in English, research in Music Mediation frequently appears in German- and French-speaking contexts. As a result, parallel discourses have developed that only partially intersect.
At a time when cultural institutions and higher music education are confronted with increasing societal expectations, questions of access and inclusion, and renewed debates about the social responsibility of the arts, a more systematic exchange between Music Mediation and Community Music appears both timely and necessary. Against this backdrop, the conference starts from the premise that practitioners and scholars in both fields can benefit substantially from closer exchange. By creating a shared space for dialogue, networking, and collaboration, we aim to explore the mutual potentials that emerge when Community Music and Music Mediation enter into sustained conversation.
From 6–9 October 2027, the first international conference explicitly dedicated to examining the relationship between Music Mediation and Community Music will take place in Vienna. The event invites practitioners, researchers, educators, and cultural leaders working within these and adjacent fields. Its primary goals are the presentation and discussion of research, exchange between practice and research, critical reflection on shared concerns as well as possible differences, and opportunities for networking.
While Music Mediation and Community Music provide the starting point for the conference, the conversation is explicitly open to perspectives from beyond these two fields. We particularly welcome contributions from practitioners and researchers who do not identify their work as either Music Mediation or Community Music, but engage with related practices and questions in areas such as socially engaged music and arts, artistic citizenship, audience and community engagement, participatory arts, arts education, cultural participation, collaborative artistic practice, cultural policy, or other relevant fields. Such perspectives can help us question established categories, identify blind spots, and explore connections that extend beyond existing disciplinary and professional boundaries.
The following questions indicate some of the themes we hope to explore and are intended as points of departure for contributions:
Practices, Concepts, and Contexts
- What current practices, developments, and debates are shaping Music Mediation, Community Music, and related fields?
- How do historical, cultural, political, institutional, and geographical contexts shape these practices and the concepts used to understand them?
- How are questions of participation, access, inclusion, artistic quality, social responsibility, power, and ethics negotiated in different contexts?
- How are Music Mediation, Community Music, and related fields conceptualised and distinguished, and how useful are existing boundaries and distinctions for contemporary practice and research?
Research, Knowledge, and Education
- What can current research tell us about practices, participants, professionals, institutions, and developments in Music Mediation, Community Music, and adjacent fields?
- What theoretical and methodological perspectives can contribute to understanding and critically examining these fields and practices?
- How are changing artistic, professional, and societal contexts reshaping practices, professional roles, and higher education in music and the arts?
Connections and Future Directions
- What can Music Mediation and Community Music learn from one another – and from perspectives, practices, and research beyond these fields?
- Which perspectives, traditions, practices, or forms of knowledge have remained marginal or underrepresented in existing discourses, and what might they contribute?
- What new questions, collaborations, alliances, and directions are emerging for artistic practice, research, education, cultural institutions, and cultural policy?
The conference language is English, with simultaneous translation into German and French planned. Conference contributors are welcome to submit manuscripts for a peer-reviewed special issue of the International Journal of Music Mediation (IJMM).