Following the commission, first performance and recording of Pictures at Our Exhibition, APO’s latest project has expanded, with presentations and panels featuring #APOpictures at events held at Cambridge University and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in July-August 2016
Members of the orchestra are involved in continuing this educational project by taking the work into schools, by uploading educational resources onto websites and in one case, by using the work as an example of good practice within advocacy research projects within an academic context.
This summer, APO trumpeter, and by day Head of Department of Music at Kingston University, Dr. Helen Julia Minors, integrated APO’s Pictures at Our Exhibition into two recent presentations. For the first, Helen led a panel advocating for the value of a music degree as part for the Higher Education provision in the UK. In her role as elected Chair of the National Association for Music in Higher Education, UK (NAMHE), she led the panel entitled ‘Mapping Trends and Framing Issues in Higher Music Education: Changing Minds/Challenging Practices’ which was part of the theme Education of the Professional Musician (CEPROM) theme, presented at the International Society for Music Education (ISME) at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow (24-29th July 2016).
The panel explored ways in which music education should be integrated across all levels of education, across diverse areas of society, including all musics and a variety of modes of creativity. Helen used APO’s Pictures as one of two examples to illustrate the benefit of a diverse, inclusive approach to creativity. The second example she used was taken from her funded project, Taking Race Live, in which she worked with student partners in exploring the role of identity in music education, in partnership with colleagues from sociology.
For the second event at Cambridge University (30th July – 1st August 2016), Building Bridges Across Borders (BIBAC2016), Helen produced a critical comparison of the National Gallery’s Soundscapes exhibition (which received unanimous negative reviews largely focusing on perceived quality of the art work, rather than the accessible agenda, outreach and new audiences) in a paper entitled: Redefining intercultural musicology as a mode of artistic and cultural translation: reassessing the National Gallery’s soundscapes exhibition (2015), with critical comparison to ‘Pictures at Our Exhibition‘, Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra (2016)’. After outlining the National Gallery’s agenda, the works, the approach and the reviews, she moved on to outline the benefit of a widening participation agenda for all musics. Showing a brief segment of the APO document, Helen iterated the benefit of APO’s work, in reference to recent academic literature and theory in music education, music sociology and psychology and intercultural arts research.
These two sessions reach over 200 music educators, academics and artists from over 30 countries. At BIBAC2016, the APO Pictures booklet was distributed (80 copies were taken at the event, and to date, some 20 further have been posted by requested. Interest has been shown form colleagues in UK, USA, Canada, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. Helen intends to develop this work as a critical article on co-creativity in widening music education.
Helen also recently spoke by request at Club inegale, on a panel, Found in Translation, with composer Michael Finnissy, and professors Peter Wiegold (Brunel) and Paul Whitty (Oxford Brookes).