Back Future Songwriting, a European project on music education involving the participation of the Music Technology research group

 

(Original news at UPF web)

Future Songwriting is a two-year European project led by Teosto, the Finnish copyright society, and has an overall budget of 840,000 euros. The project creates opportunities for a more versatile music education in various learning environments. It stresses creative self-expression, collaborative working methods and active participation in culture by enabling creative processes with technology for children and young people of all ages.

Pompeu Fabra University is participating through the Music and Machine Learning Lab led by Rafael Ramírez in the Music Technology Group (MTG) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), which will provide some of the project technology and will examine the similarities and differences in the musical creative process of different countries.

 ”Our role is to provide some of the technology for the sessions and to analyse the results. Part of what we are interested in as UPF is to explore the differences and similarities of different nationalities/cultures (Finland, Germany, France) in the creative process in music”, comments Rafael Ramírez, coordinator of the Music and Machine Learning Lab.

Into School, a pedagogical concept developed in Finland

With the help of EU funding, the Future Songwriting project will introduce, pilot and validate the Into School music education concept first developed in Finland. The concept allows teachers to develop new experiential and interactive learning environments, and strengthen the role and status of creative production in music education.

The aim of the project is to take musical creativity into schools and encourage teachers and students to focus on the creative process

In this pedagogical concept, the students compose, write and produce their own songs with the help of digital tools. This method of study has led to convincing results in the Finnish schools that implement it. The goal of the project is to take musical creativity into schools and encourage teachers and students to focus on the creative process, rather than the commonly established culture of practising to play music created by others. A challenge in music education that is similar in other parts of Europe.

The main goals of the programme are the creation of new models of musical training and education; an increase in the in-depth understanding of the processes of digitization; and to establish new business models in the field of the creative industries.

Future Songwriting’s long-term goal is to integrate a new approach to creating and learning music so that it becomes a natural part of the work culture in European schools.

Disseminating the new pedagogical concept of music learning will be one of the main results the project is expected to achieve

 ”We see this as a great opportunity to share our knowledge and experiences outside the borders of Finland and get valuable input from high-level partners with the help of European funding”, Risto Salminen, acting CEO of Teosto stated at the start of the project.

Disseminating the new pedagogical concept of music learning will be one of the main results the project is expected to achieve; in addition to preparing tutorials and a guide to best practices for music teachers that will be used as an educational tool, as well as spin-off academic publications based on the research conducted for the project.

Future Songwriting is a collaboration by Teosto (Finland), University of Arts Helsinki (Finland), Pompeu Fabra University (Spain), University of Cologne (Germany), Sacem (France), Artisjus (Hungary) and Musical Futures (United Kingdom).