Conference Agenda

This workshop offers strategies for centering the student experience when teaching equity in music studies, research, and performance practice. This workshop will describe the process of working with undergraduate and graduate students in the development of an open course called Foundations of Equity in Music Studies, the iterative feedback mechanisms established to strengthen teaching modules, and the launch of an Equity in Music Studies Community of Practice that further animates the online course materials. Participants will then have the opportunity to workshop the materials, consider their relevance to their own institutional context, and develop local communities of practices around principles of equity. Accordingly, this session will help attendees acquire and improve pedagogical skills and offer strategies for increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion in their workplaces, as well as build stronger and more supportive networks of peers and colleagues.

While opportunities to participate in conversations about EDI concepts exist centrally at Universities and within subdiscplinary association meetings, there is an opportunity to develop a centralized resource for engaging in discipline-specific topics with input from students, faculty members, and staff members. The conservatory and postsecondary study of music’s institutional model faces unique challenges in pursuit of gender and racial justice. With a historically narrow focus on Western Art Music, eurocentrism’s presence in North American music schools has resulted in structural bias and the underrepresentation of women, gender diverse, and racialized individuals among students, professors, and staff. Music research and performance programs have also been critiqued as extractive of knowledge from equity-deserving communities without proper attribution. Increasingly, higher education and arts organizations seek to change their systems of teaching, learning, and presenting music for public audiences. Especially over the past four academic years, individual instructors at the music schools worldwide have rethought course outlines and reading lists, yet still remands a more comprehensive and consistent approach that adds value to research and curricular initiatives.

Our team will present to attendees the design process of a forthcoming Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called Foundations of Equity in Music Studies. Developed through student-led conversations as part of a university work study program, this course provides a preliminary introduction to several foundational concepts relating to equity, in particular those issues most relevant to music research, teaching, and creative practice. Course content includes modules on Critiques of Music Institutions; Power Dynamics in Learner Expert Relationships; Foundations of Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression and Anti-Coloniality; Abolitionism; Trauma-Informed Teaching; Gender Diversity, Misogyny, and Gender-Based Violence; Universal Design for Learning; Cultural Diversity Across Different Teaching and Learning Environments; Musician's Health & Wellness; and Community Engagement. The content includes a series of audio and video interviews offering ways that we can learn, teach, perform, and create music informed by principles of equity. Interviews engage learners in discussion around these topics and offer questions for self-reflection in the classroom and the performance hall.

The course content attends to the culture of Music Studies in conservatories, colleges and universities, offering a shared language for music communities to discuss issues and experiences surrounding structural racism and discrimination. Modules collected in this course will benefit music communities by (1) Offering points of self-reflexive critical thinking in our day-to-day practices in and out of the classroom, (2) Raising awareness on existing and possible equity-related issues in music academia, (3) Helping us collaboratively work on our community’s operational shortcomings in dealing with equity-related issues, (4) Understanding how we can all respond to incidents of racism and discrimination in our community, and (5) Encouraging and supporting student-led dialogues and initiatives in the music community. The ultimate purpose of these modules is to offer a step towards realizing an equitable community in Music Studies – to make it a space where all feel welcome, safe, supported, and empowered to learn, teach, perform, and create.

This workshop will benefit musicians by developing and consolidating knowledge on EDI in a music-specific context. participants will learn about the development processs of this pedagogical tool, as well as the modules themes and mode of delivery. The content from this resource is highly relevant to the arts-based educational contexts found across the University and Culture sector. With input from experts across disciplines, this resource includes text and multimedia from scholars and practitioners in performing arts, arts administration programs, and our arts community.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their research expertise, interests and self-reflection to the workshop to examine the complexities of engaging with the principles of EDI across disciplines, while considering the needs that exist within their own communities and institutions of higher education.