PhD Research

Moving towards Resilience: Joint creation through music and movement for local, refugee and immigrant children

In an era of constant change and threats from political conflicts, viruses and climate change, humanity is challenged in numerous ways. Children are among the most seriously impacted from these adverse conditions, due to their youthfulness and lack of social power. Many seek refuge or migrate to European countries, hoping for a better future. Yet, often their struggle continues, facing difficulties at school, within peer community and their broader social circle. Music has proven to act as a powerful tool to stimulate empowerment, and social bonding.

The aim of this PhD research is to grow as an artist-educator through the development of research-based practices that use the “power of music” to have a meaningful social impact. The starting point is the idea that the integration of joint music making moving together, can help to build resilience. The focus lies on the role of bodily movement in music education for heterogenous groups of local, newly arrived immigrant and refugee children. The driving questions are:

What artistic and educational competences are needed to design empowering movement based music activities? What is the role of co-creation in a child-centered methodology?How can the participatory design of such activities be used to promote resilience?

By developing a solid artistic-pedagogical framework the researcher aims to investigate the potential of the participatory aspect in designing movement-based musical activities to promote resilience of a diversity of children. To achieve this, the designed workshops will promote a safe space for the children to express their interests in music, welcome their musical memories and teach them to approach the multiplicity of sound and movement with an open mind. The workshops will include activities such as collective improvisation, body percussion, instant composing, graphic scores, soundwalks and LBMS (Laban Bartenieff Movement System) inspired movement exercises.

Promotors: Prof. Peter van Petegem (UA), dr. Bob Seldrslaghs (KCA), Prof. Luc Nijs (ULuxembourg)

* This PhD research project is carried out within CORPoREAL, at Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp – AP University College and Antwerp University.

https://www.ap-arts.be/index.php/en/research/moving-towards-resilience

Moving in Musicking: Promoting social inclusiveness for children at risk

Facing one of the biggest refugee crises in history, our world is continuously challenged in numerous ways. Worldwide, children face adverse experiences by being exposed to risks like political violence and forced migration. As a socially engaged artist and educator, I cannot remain passive. I feel the urge to apply my educational and artistic experiences, skills and insights to stimulate the younger generations.

In my educational practice, I have experienced so many times how “the power of music” helps children to connect, open their minds and creatively engage with music. Therefore, I want to thoroughly investigate the potential of movement-based musical activities to promote social inclusiveness and resilience for children that had to leave their homeland and they often experience difficulties in integrating into the new environment that they have been brought to. To realise this, I want to take a specific stance as a researcher: rather than developing a method “for” children at risk, I will develop it “with” the children and their environment, by jointly engaging in an artistic process where their needs, ideas and creative aspirations get a voice.

In this start project, I will develop a theoretical framework and design a series of creative musical activities that combine music and movement, based on some theories and on my own experience as a teaching artist. Next, I will develop a child-centred methodology and try it out in a study.

* This research project was carried out within CORPoREAL, at Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp – AP University College.

https://www.ap-arts.be/en/research/moving-musicking-promoting-social-inclusiveness-children-risk

Resilience in Resonance: Promoting resilience through joint music learning

The “Resilience in Resonance” project (June 2021- May 2022) is funded by the Creative Europe Programme (call N° EAC/S53/2019. “Music Education and Learning”). The beneficiary is the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp (Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool Antwerpen) and the coordinator is dr. Luc Nijs.

In this small-scale project, the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp will deploy easily accessible instrument teaching (clarinet) in order to help children at risk finding their voice, sharing their experiences, and building resilience through musical expression. In this program, we will apply a previously developed, novel pedagogy of kinemusical improvisation (that is: improvisation through music and motion) in three well-chosen informal learning settings for children at risk in Belgium, Cyprus, and Poland. Within these informal learning settings, we will enable children to share their learning process with each other and with their counterparts abroad through digital sharing technology, setting up an interactive learning community. At the same time, we will monitor local educators within these settings in order to mainstream best learning practices and to perpetuate learning benefits beyond the terms of the project. Finally, we will develop guidelines on how to transfer learning benefits from this small-scale project to other informal learning settings of children at risk in Europe.

Monitoring Team

dr. Luc Nijs – coordinator (Ghent University / Royal Conservatoire Antwerp – AP University College)

dr. An de Bisschop (Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp / Royal Conservatoire Ghent – Hogent)

Prof. dr. Barbara Dutkiewicz (Akademia Muzyczna Katowice)

dr. Yiannis Miralis (European University Cyprus)

Georgia Nicolaou (Royal Conservatoire Antwerp – AP University College / Musica Impulse Center of Music, Belgium)

Hans van Regenmortel (Musica Impulse Center of Music, Belgium)

Prof. dr. David-Emil Wickström (Popakademie Baden-Württemberg)