The School of Music at the North-West University (NWU) and the research niche area Musical Arts in South Africa: Resources and Applications (MASARA) recently hosted the sixteenth Cultural Diversity in Music Education (CDIME) conference under the leadership of Prof Albi Odendaal.
The biennial international conference ran from 9 to 11 October and was held at the Waterfront Breakwater Lodge in Cape Town. It provided a platform for the exchange of practices and research relating to cultural diversity in music education.
The theme this year was ecologies and diversities, which invited participants to consider diversity in music education using theories and ideas drawn from ecological thinking. This included, but was not limited to:
· The relationships between ecological sustainability, the climate crisis, music education and cultural diversity.
· Cultural, social, economic, technological or sonic ecologies that relate to cultural diversity in music education.
· Systems and relationships in, beyond or outside music education situations that foster or limit cultural diversity.
· Embodied systems of thought or practice as they relate to cultural diversity in music education.
· Coloniality, decoloniality or postcoloniality and cultural diversity.
· Ways in which classrooms, schools, schooling systems, teacher training, policy or curricula can be understood as ecological and how such ecologies relate to cultural diversity in music education.
Twenty-eight presenters from eight different countries attended the conference, including five researchers affiliated with MASARA. The researchers included Prof Liesl van der Merwe, Prof Mignon van Vreden and Dr Janelize Morelli. Two extraordinary researchers associated with MASARA, Dr Urvi Drummond and Dr Debra Joubert, also presented their work.
In addition, the informative paper titled "Understanding the Affordances and Limitations of an Aesthetic of Attention for Transformative Music Education in South Africa" was presented by Dr Janelize Morelli. The exciting research on "Creating and Teaching ‘Green Songs’ for Sustainability: Tuning in to Student Voices in Music Education" by Prof Mignon van Vreden followed.
The comprehensive analytical paper titled "Understanding the Elements that Inhibit Joyful Experiences in Music Education Situations: An Integrative Review" was written collaboratively by Dr Debra Joubert and Prof Liesel van der Merwe.
Dr Alibhe Kenny, associate professor of Music Education and Irish Research Laureate, was the keynote speaker and presented the accumulation of eight years of research on music education in migrant reception centres in Germany and Ireland.
Migrants and refugees, according to Dr Kenny, face difficult circumstances in these reception centres, with freedom limited and restricted by government policies. Boredom is often the principal experience of these migrants, as all initiative is taken away from them.
Through intentional and regular musical interaction, she has documented the ways in which music helps migrants deal with the liminality of the spaces they have to live in.
The next meeting of the CDIME will be held in Limerick, Ireland in 2025.
Some of the delegates who attended the recently held 16th Cultural Diversity in Music Education conference.
