The main focus of the Strategic Partnership project “RAPP Lab – How Reflectiveness and Critical Thinking Empower Musicians to Create New Economic and Cultural Roles and Structures” is on how the reflective methodologies of artistic research empower musicians to creatively respond to the economic-cultural environment with which they are confronted – a more dispersive, multi-layered, dynamic environment than the one the European conservatoire systems were designed for. RAPP Lab is based on the premise that the way of handling artistic material can change through reflection (new practices, concert formats, learning formats etc.). This will have effects on learning and teaching in Music HEI and on the continuous personal self-development of musicians as they participate in the civic and social life of the future. Having gained new knowledge through reflectiveness and critical thinking empowers students, graduates and teachers to create new economic and cultural roles and as a consequence to increase cultural participation. Benefiting in the longer term, RAPP Lab’s potential for an entrepreneurial dimension in HME is not only to support the students’ artistic development but also to equip them with the appropriate ‘meta-skills’. The ‘meta skills’ of adaptability, of going through processes of reflection, of turning obstacles into opportunities and of simply ‘making things happen’ are going to be as relevant in their own way for the musicians of the future as their core musical skills. At the same time, a musician equipped with these skills is going to shape more likely a full and engaged role in society, using their musical and reflective skills not just to promote their own careers but also to be in close contact to the ‘real-world’ around them. These are the main objectives: 1. Widening the knowledge of musical practitioners and the scope of their future education through reflectiveness and critical thinking 2. Complementing high specialisation in music practice with additional forms of knowledge-production 3. Developing prototypical forms of teaching, learning and continuous self-development (Labs 1-6) 4. Empowering musicians to create new economic and cultural roles and structures Steps towards such goals are the following: As a first step, the RAPP Lab team will define a preliminary draft of standards (Guidelines for the methodology, experimental settings etc.) that will be used to finally agree on a set of shared criteria for the relations of critical reflection, artistic practice and additional forms of teaching, learning and continuous self-development. These standards will lead to four work packages, who will identify the theoretical concept of the project and the different project activities, and are the basis for the evaluation of the respective activities. RAPP Lab consists of a pool of various activities linked together as a puzzle to generate new modules, methods, experimental settings and transferable modules for acquiring artistic skills through critical thinking and reflection-based practice. Each activity takes a different perspective on the meta-theme "RAPP Lab" and develops a suitable implementation (Lab 1-6) depending on the specific focus of the activity. Each focus is central to the question of the development of new prototypical forms of teaching and learning through reflectiveness and critical thinking and refers to relevant aspects within the discourse of artistic research. Each LTT-activity (Lab 1-6) will specialize on one experimental setting for/in acquiring artistic skills and will lead or be part of the four intellectual outputs. The Labs will be represented through online-tutorials, interviews and web-based tool-kits on a final web-platform. RAPP Lab’s participants are teachers, researchers, institutional leaders and students (BA/MA and PhD) of each institution of the project consortium, led by the HFMT Cologne. The Strategic Partnership involves various European HME, each of which contributes to RAPP Lab's multi-thematic approach with an individual LTT activity (RAPP Labs 1-6). RAPP Lab is based on these three main pillars: 1. Providing reflectiveness and critical thinking through artistic research By: Bootcamps, workshops, experimental settings on: Developing Cognitive skills (Lab 1), Critical Reflection (Lab 2), Phenomenology (Lab 3), Transculturality (Lab 4), Autoethnography (Lab 5), Improvisation (Lab 6). 2. New methods of teaching integrated in HME in order to empower students to find and create their own employment opportunities and cultural roles By: Creating Guidelines, developing and redefining modules and promoting experimental learning-teaching formats 3. Dissemination of that new teaching and understanding By: Transferable exemplars, tutorials, interviews, web-based tool-kits, interactive web-platform, multiplier events and evaluation
We wanted to widen the knowledge of musical practitioners and the scope of their future education through reflectiveness and critical thinking. The high specialization in music practice has to be complemented by additional forms of knowledge-production. This achievement has been based on the development of prototypical forms of teaching, learning and continuous self-development (Labs 1-6). Through implementing the project we wanted to achieve the empowerment of musicians to create new economic and cultural roles and structures. By running the project partners also wanted to elaborate and provide practical suggestions for implementing Artistic Research in HME: a kind of library of tools for artistic researchers to experiment and try-out both in individual practice, but also in educational context. We wanted to elaborate and test best practice models, to achieve new knowledge, new structures (learning and teaching) and through this developing out study programmes on the AR-community in Music HEIs.
The RAPP Lab consortium wanted to find solutions for the empowerment of musicians to creatively respond to the economic-cultural environment with which they are confronted – namely a more dispersive, multi-layered, dynamic environment than the one the European conservatoire systems were designed for. The finding of these concepts has been made through reflective methodologies of Artistic Research. Together all institutions’ aim was to find new approaches and models, to develop the curricula of the collaborating institutions and to learn from other experts of the collaborating institutions. Partners also saw the application as an opportunity for the own institution to sharpen ideas with the support of strong and experienced colleague-institutions/partner-institutions. The needs we addressed were facing the lack of practical resources for Artistic Research, for cognitive skills and for the changing employment market for artists/researchers. We addressed the need of models for the training and development of reflective practices in Artistic Research and art education in general and the topic of Artistic Research on a cross-border level.