Selected results of students’ expectations and experiences from the European research project “Schools@Concerts”

Presenters:

• Andreas Bernhofer
• Peter Mall
• Lejla Beqiri - Vula
• Sabina Vidulin
• Emma Nenadic
• Gabriela Konkol

Theme: student’s perception in School projects connected to concert visits

The starting point of the European research project “Schools@Concerts” is quiet simple: Schools cooperate with concert hosts to give pupils the possibility to attend classical concerts. Such music education outreach projects take place all over Europe in a variety of forms. This plurality of individual cases is the nucleus of this research project, where data from ten different European cooperation projects are compared.

Connected to the conference theme, the symposium focuses on the students’ perspectives within the projects. Schools@Concerts uses the design of a multi-case study, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Students’ expectations, pre-conditions and concert experiences are collected in a pre-post setup using validated constructs as well as open questions. This data is complemented by a group discussion of students after the concert. The study aims in describing relations of pre-conditions and expressed concert experiences on the background of regional distinctions, including school curricula.

The symposium aims not only on presenting different approaches of cooperations all over Europe, but will especially compare and discuss the selected data. A clear added value of this comparative research project arises from the triangulation of results in an international context.

Andreas Bernhofer

Foundation and theoretical background of the “Schools@Concerts” research project with the focus on the students’ experiences

The first part of this symposium should give a brief overview about the foundation and theoretical background of the European research project “Schools@Concerts”, which started in 2017 and interconnects ten researchers from eight European countries with their selected cooperation projects. The main goals of the research project are:

• Mapping and detailed description of selected cooperation projects in different European countries
• Comparison of the participating projects, where schools cooperate with concert hosts and pupils are invited to attend classical concerts
• Analysis and Comparison of contexts and backgrounds of the different cooperation projects between schools and concert hosts within their national frameworks

The scientific fundamentals for this research project are based on publications about concert experiences of young people (Bernhofer 2016), literature on cooperations between schools and concert hosts (Mall 2014) and situated learning (Lave & Wenger 1991).

The students’ perspective

Besides the different research topics of the project, the symposium places emphasis on the results concerning the goals and expectations of the participating pupils as well as their individual concert experiences. Data was collected by questionnaires before and after the projects as well as group interviews with the participating students. Additionally, the pupils were asked to draw a picture about their memories from the concert projects. The data analysis takes place on two different levels: Each project is examined as a single case as well as an example for a cooperation project within its national circumstances and compared with other projects (multiple case study).

Peter Mall

Connecting student generations - Inviting schools to university concerts

The HfMDK Frankfurt is one of the most active concert hosts in Frankfurt, providing concerts almost every day, mainly presentations of its students and professors. On the one hand, the concerts are part of the students formation as musicians, on the other hand they are a chance to connect the university with the city. This openness is important to highlight the value of the provided education and it’s importance for the local culture. One aspect of this openness is inviting schools into the university, to let the pupils get an insight into the musical formation at the university and their artistic output.

As part of the Schools@Concerts research project, the visit of a school class at a concert of the university orchestra was chosen for this presentation. The pupils had a brief introduction about the concert pieces at school, visited the university and joined music students during their classes. At the end of the day, they visited the concert of the university orchestra.

The pupils answered the project questionnaires before and after the concert visit and joined a group discussion. This part of the symposium will briefly introduce the local project specifics and will otherwise focus on the presentation of the pre-conceptions questionnaire as described in the frame document, including the short test of musical preferences (STOMP) and the musical self concept inquiry.

Lejla Beqiri - Vula

Schools@Concerts in Macedonia - Growing up in a growing culture

My project took place in Tetovo - a city 45 km form the capital city and the second biggest city in Macedonia. It is a city that lately has witnessed a vividly cultural growing in almost every aspect of it. Being so, many festivals are hosted and a lot of international artists and orchestras come and perform. One of which was chosen for this project of mine. It is an international festival and an abrought American orchestra was performing. They performed in House of Culture being the biggest concert hall in Tetovo with capacity of 600 seats.

A selected number of students were chosen from the biggest primary school in Tetovo (counting more than 2000 students) and they were asked to answer questions before and after the concert. They were also asked to draw their impressions after the concert on a paper. Special questionnaires were also fulfilled by the concert host, school principal and the music teacher.

Sabina Vidulin

Schools@Concerts project in Croatia: pupils’ and teachers’ expectations and outcomes

The idea of the project Schools@Concerts: Tuning up for the music experience is the comparison of different European projects, where schools cooperate with concert hosts and pupils are invited to attend classical concerts. It includes three levels of research: for pupils and teachers through the preparation process and follow-up activities and concert hosts. The project partner in Croatia was Hrvatska glazbena mladež who realized the concert with Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra in Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall in Zagreb, playing C. Debussy and B. Kunc music. The pupils and music teacher from the school Đuro Pilar, Slavonski Brod was included in the research.

The project includes four parts: 1) before the concert teacher was interviewed and pupils answered to the questionnaire; 2) preparation for the concert; 3) attending concert; 3) group interview with pupils and interview with teacher regarding the concert.

36 pupils from six to eight grade participated in the research. They expected that the concert will be interesting, relaxing, to have fun but also to learn something new and hear the instrument alive. Before the concert the teacher prepared one lesson introducing the music works, composers and stylistic period. The results showed that the concert was a nice and pleasant experience for pupils and teacher. The pupils noticed mostly the atmosphere, instruments, listen to music carefully, was impressed with a concert hall and people around, happy to listen to music alive. After the concert the pupils talked about the given tasks with teacher and recognize the music elements of which the art-work is made of. The unexpected outcomes of this project is the wide range of emotions that pupils’ expressed after the concert with a main statement that they want to attend in the future more concerts of art music.

Emma Nenadic

Schools@Concerts: An English Case Study

This English case study focusses on a schools concert by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) aimed at Key Stage Three students (11-14 years old). The hour-long concert, KS3: CBSO Dissected, provides an opportunity for students to see a world-class orchestra performing a ‘snapshot’ of orchestral music in the authentic setting of Birmingham’s (England’s second largest city) Symphony Hall. The programme features a diverse range of repertoire from Mendelssohn and Sibelius to film music and contemporary classical. The concert is part of the CBSO education team’s secondary school (ages 11-18) offer and is supported by Birmingham’s Music Education Hub, a collection of music organisations that work together to provide joined up music education provision.

The concert is an annual one-off event and is not linked to any in-school projects. However, the school participating in this study has previously engaged with CBSO’s education programme and therefore has prior knowledge and experience of the orchestra.

At the time of this study music education in England faces severe challenges including decreasing curriculum time and a drop in student uptake of music. The implications for music education outreach projects and events like this concert will be discussed at today’s symposium.

Gabriela Konkol

Schools@Concerts in Poland: chance for children and needed cooperation for culture institutions

In this statement I would like to present Schools@Concerts project which took place in Gdansk (Poland). The institutions involved in the project were: Gdansk Primary School, Polish Baltic Philharmonic Hall in Gdansk and Music Academy in Gdansk. One of the aims of the project was to look at pupils’ (ages 10-11) experiences during symphonic concerts. The idea of organising concerts for children is very popular in Poland nowadays. Almost every culture institution offers a special educational concert for pupils from primary or secondary schools. However, Schools@Concerts project give a chance for children to attend a regular classical concert. It can be also seen as a model of needed cooperation between culture institution in a city and region.