Can the conservatoire justify its place in 21^st Music Education?

Time	Activity
9.45	Coffee
10.00	Welcome: Setting the scene The educational landscape The discourses within music
10.15	Fishbowl discussions his session will introduce topics for discussion throughout the day. Three questions will be posed and debated via fishbowl discussions:[1] The questions and discussants are as follows: Question 1: Music in society - What are we training our current musicians to be? o Invited discussants – Diana Roberts, Sara Lee, Rosie Perkins Question 2: Music in practice –How do our musicians navigate between performing a canon set out in textual sources, and originality and individuality in performance? o Invited discussants – Ivan Hewett, Adam Whittaker, Richard Wistreich Question 3:Music and the curriculum - Should our conservatoire curriculum critically reflect and overcome the hegemonic heritage of the canon and its related teaching methodologies? o Invited discussants: Natasha Loges, Martin Fautley, Barbara Gentili Interactive presentation software will be used to capture audience thoughts and questions – *please bring a phone or tablet to use this*. The chair and discussants will draw on these.
11.45	Comfort break
12.00	Lightening Talks The lightening talk session enable a range of different viewpoints to be introduced and discussed in quick fire succession. The lightening talks will take the format of a 'Speakers Corner'. A maximum of 12 two-minute lightening talks will be given. Names will be randomly called from those who volunteered on arrival or during the comfort break. The person who has been called will stand and give their two-minute lightening talk. They will then take a corner of the room. After four lightening talks, there is a 10-minute discussion period where participants can go to the speaker's corner and continue the discussion started by the lightening talk. Questions to stimulate lightening talks: What are we doing to open up the repertoire and our approaches to learning this repertoire? What innovative teaching methods are being trialed? Do they break hegemonic practices? What is in the recent research that music aids well-being? How does this relate to the type of training that conservatoires currently do? Does our training accurately reflect the work that musicians do in society? Is the music that our musicians study relevant to the wider community? Please sign up for a lightening talk either in advance or when you arrive.
13.00	Reflection on morning – drawing together the key questions: What are the themes and connections in all the responses raised so far? Can we find over-arching categories? Are these within or without our control?
13.30	Lunch
14.00	Making Connections and Moving Forward: structured group discussion with specific tasks Participants are invited to work in groups and undertake two tasks: How do the issues identified this morning relate to wider issues raised in research? o Questions from reading: discuss either the following questions or your own questions inspired from the readings: Does the problem lie in what we teach or how we teach it? How far can a blanket pedagogy (formal or informal) or methodology address issues of an exclusive or hegemonic curriculum? Is the Conservatoire in crisis? Do we need to widen the social and cultural demographic of students, and/or the impact of our music business? Are we perpetuating a cultural heritage without acknowledging its narratives of cultural domination? If so, do we see this as a problem How do the wider issues relate to a conservative curriculum? What can be done at RCM to move the curriculum forward? o To what degree do our teaching methodologies reinforce hegemonic structures that prioritise types of music and of music making? o What status can other methods have? o How do conservatoire training / lack of music education generally (lack of government funding for this) and elitist thinking coincide? o What innovative practice exists at the RCM? Is there a general awareness of this? What helps or hinders this awareness?
15.00	Concluding discussion: feedback from the different groups discussions Reflections on the overall course of discussion
16.00	Close

[1] In a fishbowl discussion, four chairs are placed in the middle of the audience who sits in a circle around the chairs. Three invited discussants start a conversation, one chair remains empty. After a short period of time, audience members are invited to sit in the empty chair and join in the discussion. One chair must always be empty as an invitation to join the discussion, so when the empty chair is filled, one of the discussants leaves the centre to join the audience.