Falk Hübner – HKU Utrecht, The Netherlands

The project

The project that I like to bring to this ICON seminar is a joint effort of three institutions within the HKU University of the Arts: HKU Utrechts Conservatoire, HKU Research Centre Performative Processes and HKU Research Group “Muzische Professionalisering“. The overall aim of the project is the development, support and activation of the conservatoire as a research environment. Or, from a different perspective, the development of a research environment within the Utrechts Conservatoire.

The first step within this fairly huge undertaking is the framing of what we regard as a research environment, and what this environment might consist of. We approach this on three different levels:

1. Activities (lectures, workshops, lab sessions)
2. Places, physical spaces (spaces dedicated to experimentation or discussion, library)
3. People (both teachers and students who engage in various kinds of research activities)

Dreams and why it is important

In my dreams the idea of a research environment has a huge impact on the conservatoire as a whole and on the ideas about teaching and learning. On a broader level, such an environment should facilitate asking questions, experimenting, making connections between peers, professionalization, sharing and disseminating processes, methods and outcomes; and all this regardless of genres/styles or of somebody is teacher or student. Also teachers should be researching in the conservatoire as one of the activities to be carried out there.

In the end this can also mean a different kind of learning community than it is today (is it at all?), and expanding the idea of peer groups. Questions, doubt and process can be allowed to be at the forefront much more, rather than inflexible tradition, one-sided teacher-student relationships and fixed ideas about judgments, about what is quality and what not.

Particular aspect for within the seminar

At the seminar I would love to look into the approaches we are taking for developing this research environment up to now. To date, we are working on a number of ideas and activities surrounding the three levels mentioned above, including bringing a few of these into practice. However, a conservatoire seems to remains a difficult place for this kind of innovation, which means that we are confronted with several difficulties. To have a deeper look into these and into the ideas and strategies for tackling them would be great to do during the seminar.