A&HHE Special Issue June 2016

Peer Reviewed Digital Edition of ‘The Reflective Conservatoire’ – with integrated digital media/fora

Editorial

This collection of papers emerges from the Reflective Conservatoire Conference, February 2015, held at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London. It sits alongside the special edition of the journal, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education vol 15 3 /4 (http://ahh.sagepub.com). Together they seek to catalyze evolving visions for specialist education/training in the performing arts, considering a range of developmental initiatives within this sector, and to reflect on the wider relevance of initiatives undertaken in these disciplines to the fields of research and professional practice in the arts and humanities as a whole. The collection presents a series of research papers, essays and fora articulating practitioner case studies to illuminate particular topics. All have been revised after full, rigorous peer review. In addition to the written papers, a creative encounters platform showcases associated audio-visual material, including keynote presentations from the conference.

The majority of the papers go into core aspects of the developmental process for musicians, and clearly demonstrate a growing research field occupied with illuminating, reflecting on and developing these practices. Shared themes come through, for example the significance of opening up relationships between embodied and cognitive knowledge, ways into playfulness and enabling a creative voice within the context of intense craft skills to be learned, and the challenges of individual practice and study time. As with the special edition, however, the collection begins with some more outward-facing perspectives (Amussen et al.; Danielsen and Carruthers, particularly considering notions of building communities and audiences from both institutional and individual artist perspectives, and underpinned by the development of innovative practices and skills in creative entrepreneurship. These papers resonate powerfully with directions taken in the special edition by Tregear et al., Myers et al., Smilde and Leech-Wilkinson, reinforcing the imperative they identify for curriculum and pedagogical development, and demonstrating potent ways in which this is now taking place.

Within this context of renewing practices in specialist higher music education, a central concern with enquiry and the development of a curious, playful and reflective mindset is then highlighted. This immediately foregrounds the particular potential and challenges of research and reflective practice with embodied disciplines. Following on from Guillaumier and Hubrich who both tackle these issues in the special edition, several papers shed light on particular ways to stimulate embodied enquiry in practitioners, from undergraduates to seasoned professionals, and indeed to communicate outcomes from such enquiry as research.

Konings, Greenhead, Gjerris and Norgard, and Rea all focus in on learning through embodied processes of discovery, often drawn from other disciplines, notably theatre and movement. These are compelling vignettes of creative pedagogies evolved to meet the needs of students with strongly practical orientation. They demonstrate just how much an embodied journey is essential to musicianship, and indeed may be transformative in ways that more straightforwardly cognitive approaches to development cannot enable.

Coessens, Spissky and Schacher start from a similar place, recognizing the intrinsic value of embodied enquiry, but then go on to seek out appropriate ways to communicate the outcomes as research, thereby connecting this work back to a more traditionally cognitive paradigm. As a counterpart to their accounts, Caprioli et al. attend to the wider policy and institutional context in Italy for research, underlining tensions between embodied and cognitive enquiry that undoubtedly continue to resonate in many countries.

Mooiman and de Jong cogently place improvisation at the heart of a western classical musician’s discovery of how their music works, and the tools of embodying its different styles. Both Varvarigou and Haddon further emphasise the contribution of proactive peer learning to supporting student enquiry through a range of repertoire and musical styles. Van Veldhoven then takes the potential of improvisation underpinning discovery into the context of interdisciplinary interactions and performance projects.

Many of these themes are picked up in the group of papers which each pay attention to issues of individual study and practicing. The mixture of research papers and practitioner case studies here indicates just how vital approaches to individual study are within this kind of higher education environment. Issues of health and well-being are unpacked (Norton), as is the relationship with a teacher/coach in planning and monitoring practice (Carlsen, Pranevicius and Hawkes). The place of improvisation in practicing returns (Johansen), alongside consideration of frameworks for responding to making mistakes (Kruse-Weber), and the notion of practicing as a process of enquiry (Stacho) that makes use of a range of sophisticated feedback loops to support this (Esslin-Peard), come through in several of the contributions. Although practicing is generally understood to be a solitary activity, a strong sense of individuals connected within communities of practices is evident in these papers, and several explicitly mention the impact of peer exchange. Connections therefore surface to the papers in the special edition that focus on peer learning (Hanken; Duffy) and the development that can be so dynamic within purposeful communities of practice in these disciplines in higher education.

The collection as a whole bears witness to the seriousness with which the purpose and practices of higher education in the performing arts disciplines are being taken by academics and professional practitioners within them. With ongoing change being a critical feature of both higher education and the performing arts industries, it is essential that these communities continue to develop the depth and breadth of the enquiry and innovation that is evident in the collection, thereby successfully navigating the paradigm shift that seems to be upon us.