‘Widening participation on the road to membership’

‘Widening participation on the road to membership’ is a project funded by the Swedish developmental agency Sida in the Western Balkans region. The project, which is contracted by the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and co-ordinated by the AEC, will run from 15 March 2009 to 30 June 2011. It aims to tune academies with European educational and administrative standards at the higher education level, and to widen participation in higher music education by better and easier access for children and youth to early stage higher music education.

The project partners are:
• Academy of Arts of the University of Banja Luka,
• Music Academy of the University of Sarajevo,
• Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade,
• Music Academy of the University of Montenegro, and
• Academy of Arts of the University of Novi Sad.

To achieve the project results, several objectives have been set. In order to tune Western Balkan music academies with European educational and administrative standards at higher education level, knowledge and skills of academic and management staff in the various technical principles of the Bologna Declaration process need to be developed (e.g. learning outcomes, curriculum design, credit points, internal quality assurance, external quality assurance and accreditation, etc), as well as some additional issues related to ‘Bologna’ (doctoral programmes, institutional governance including the role of students, alumni policies, etc). Furthermore, international and European cooperation tools and methods need to be developed with the aim to enhance the attractiveness of the academies to foreign students and to prepare participation in the EU programmes.

To widen participation in higher music education, the position of the academies need to be further developed as regional centres of expertise for music education through an improved offer of continuing professional development provision to teachers. Furthermore, expertise in the area of pre-college training needs to be developed in the area of pre-college training through cooperation with institutions at the pre-college training level in other European countries.

To achieve these objectives, the partners will undertake a diverse set of activities. The partners will participate in international conferences such as the AEC Annual congress and ‘Polifonia’ dissemination conferences; they will participate and host seminars in the fields of Bologna process, research in music and instrumental/vocal teacher training. They will also develop their international dimension through improvement of their websites and promotional materials and organise artistic activities (e.g. master classes, workshops, summer academies).Counsellors will be visiting the same academies 4 times over the project period to assist academies with issues relevant to their current development.

The partners will also organise open house activities as well as local and regional concerts, and develop and implement continuing professional development courses for music school teachers in the region.