[Commlist] CfP: Creative Identities in Transition: Higher Music Education & Employability in the 21st Century

*Call for Papers – Extended Deadline: 20 October 2019*

**

*CREATIVE IDENTITIES IN TRANSITION:*

*HIGHER MUSIC EDUCATION & EMPLOYABILITY IN THE 21^ST CENTURY*

**

**

*27–29 February 2020*

*University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna*

*Austria*

**

*Organisers:* Rosa Reitsamer, Rainer Prokop

www.musiksoziologie.at



*Keynote speakers:*


*Christina Scharff*

King´s College London, UK


*Dawn Bennett*

Curtin University, Australia



Higher music education institutions aim at helping students to acquire 
skills and knowledge and to develop specific personal attributes to 
negotiate the initial stages of their careers as musicians and to attain 
employability and life-long learning. However, the learning cultures and 
practices of artistic valuation at music universities and conservatoires 
are hardly explored and employability is poorly defined and hard to 
measure, especially in the face of changing relations between study and 
work. These changes include, for example, individualisation processes, a 
growing number of music graduates competing for work and a decrease of 
publicly funded orchestras in many European countries. The process of 
becoming a musician is thus not simply about sequentially passing 
through particular stages of development. Rather, it entails the 
negotiation of significant and complex rites of passages increasingly 
associated with a heightened responsibility for constructing one’s own 
career and identity. Moreover, transitions from study to working life 
are shaped by gender, race, class and sexuality and include dilemmas in 
weaving together established normative and personal meanings. As a 
result, career trajectories remain, in many cases, “permanently 
transitional”.


For musicians, pursuing creative pleasures and advancing a career also 
means to develop various strategies to respond to the precarious 
character of musical labour and to negotiate established notions of 
achievement and success set by academia and the wider community of 
musicians and audiences. These strategies include, among others, the 
promotion of the neoliberal ideal of the entrepreneurial self, extensive 
social networking and the holding of multiple jobs to sustain livelihood 
and cultural production. However, musicians and artists have also 
established initiatives such as “Help Musicians UK”, #MeToo, “Time’s 
Up”, “We Have Voice” or “art but fair”. These initiatives encourage 
discussions around musical labour, fight discrimination and exposure to 
racism, sexism and homo-/transphobia and aim at bringing about social 
change within music labour markets and in broader society.


The conference seeks to address the following three thematic streams and 
welcomes proposals from any perspective and using any methodology. 
Topics include but are not limited to:


*Higher Music Education*

•Progressive developments of curricula and study programmes in response 
to the ever-changing music profession in the 21^st century
•Learning cultures at higher music education institutions, including 
skill and knowledge acquisition
•Valuation of music performances at entry exams and recitals
•(Re-)Production of musical hierarchies among students and staff
•Gendered career aspirations of music students
•Persistence of racialised and classed notions of musical talent and 
excellence at higher music education institutions
•Post-colonial and feminist/queer initiatives at music universities and 
conservatoires that address the effects of colonialism, practices of 
exclusion and ambivalent inclusion at the level of students and staff 
and create spaces for discussion and cultures of solidarity


*Transitions*

•Transitions from study to work, rites of passages and employability
•Career trajectories that remain “permanently transitional”
•Agency, identity work and developing musicianship
•Strategies to combine study, work and creative pleasures
•Transitions of music students and graduates in the context of recent 
migration movements
•Non-normative rites of passages embarked by music students and graduates


*Music Labour Markets*

•Trends within music labour markets (e.g. western art music, jazz, 
rock/pop), including horizontal and vertical segregation
•Dimensions and demands for developing diverse forms of careers (e.g. 
portfolio careers, DIY careers, stable careers)
•Musicians as entrepreneurial subjects
•Self-representations of musicians in digital space
•Networking and self-promotion in the context of post-feminism and 
post-racialism
•Queer practices of musical labour, including alternative career 
trajectories
•Political struggles against precarious working conditions
•Anti-racist and feminist/queer activism fighting inequalities


Abstracts should include theoretical framework, conceptualisations, 
methodology and show reference to the conference topic. Please also 
include a key word line.


Please submit your abstracts (max. 300 words) for papers and panels, 
including a short biography (max. 100 words) and institutional 
affiliation, in English language until *20 October 2019* to Rainer 
Prokop, (prokop /at/ mdw.ac.at).


Decisions on the acceptance of proposals will be announced at the 
beginning of November 2019.



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