This project answers the need to develop collaborative tools, share knowledge and transfer pedagogical innovation in the very specific field of music theory in higher music education institutions throughout Europe by working towards a pedagogical rapprochement. These courses are often the object of pedagogical reflections but there’s a lack of a centralised source and framework to support this reflection by means of cross-disciplinary study at European and international level. A certain pedagogical adaptability must lead teachers to reopen their pedagogical perspective and to teach their students using other methodologies or at least share them. The project intends to tackle the question of the transfer of practices and methodologies between higher music education institutions (HMEI), in particular for music theory courses. Indeed, there is a significant wealth of educational practices from one country to another in this sector, especially in terms of harmonic musical notation and analysis. Nevertheless, HMEI are facing the nonexistence of a European network for pedagogical staff in theoretical subjects such as harmony, musical analysis, ear training, solfeggio, specific to the realities and practices of higher arts schools. University networks exists reserved for university researchers (EUROMAC) while the teachers of theoretical subjects in European HMEI are generally not PhD and even less musicologists. They studied an instrument, or specialized in subjects such as counterpoint, fugue or composition. Musicologists do not practice music and are even for the most part non-instrumentalists. These HMEI, however, have an increased need to develop their internationalisation and therefore to develop a network between teachers to look for other sources and practices and update their own courses content or develop new music theory subjects in their institution.The project, targeting music theory departments' community (institutions, teachers, students and professionals) in HMEI's will pursue the following objectives:- Collect, analyse, share, compare and transfer the pedagogical practices of the music theory courses among HMEI in Europe- Create a meeting and exchange room for teachers of these disciplines in order to encourage the confrontation of practices and the development of joint tools- Create a reference platform for music theory lessons- Maintain and develop the place of music theory courses in the curricula of the various higher education institutions concerned- Maintain, develop, modernise, update and promote music theory courses and their curricula- Develop a network of teachers of theory courses in musical fields- Foster and strengthen the links between higher education institutions, research and professionals musicians in the field of music theory in Europe - Foster and strengthen the internationalisation of higher music education institutionsAs a partnership we aim to develop in this project several outputs and activities to reach results in line with the project’s objectives. We plan to particularly work on innovation in the area of music theory by:-Develop an online exchange platform on harmony and music analysis (IO1)-Develop a dynamic EU bibliography (IO2)-Develop a catalogue of new methodologies and practices (IO3)-Develop a Multi Language terminology dictionary in music theory (IO4)-Organise 1 training for staff and 1 intensive programme for students-Organise 1 dissemination conference and 1 final conference gathering at least 200 participants coming from HMEI across Europe and beyond-Foster transfer of new methodologies and practices into music theory courses-Strengthening the internationalisation of each participating institutionsThe project intends to have a wide impact mainly at national and European level by giving the higher education institutions in Europe providing music theory courses online tools to help the music theory community to find resources, new methodologies and courses content to reinforce the skills of the teaching staff and of the students.Results of the project will be available for free in digital format and integrated into the platform (IO1), to ensure their visibility and a wide exploitation by the institutions organising music theory courses.

This strategic partnership was based on years of collaboration of several European conservatoires where the music master programme for New Audiences and Innovative Practice (NAIP) was developed and implemented. The partnership also included new partners, which had in the years before the start of the project witnessed the progress of the NAIP programme and thus gained interest in its methodologies and ideology. This partnership project consisted of several events over two years period aimed at further development, improvement and promoting of methodology and joint curriculum using mobility in the form of two intensive study programmes, three working groups, two joint staff training events and two periods of staff development. The core of the NAIP programme is creative collaborative learning, where mentoring and practice based research play a major role. The aim is to be a platform for professional integration, entrepreneurship, creative collaborative practice, cross-arts and cross-sector practice and community engagement within the domain of higher education. This is particularly relevant as the music world is increasingly in need of more variety of skillful and flexible musicians capable of relating to society and finding new roles and carriers, at the same time as traditional employment opportunities are less and less accessible. The programme calls for creative musicians who have achieved a high standard of performance and show strong potential of entrepreneurship, leadership and communication skills. This project has strengthened the foundations of developing and promoting creative collaborative learning with enhanced quality, utilizing cross border collaboration and extensive dissemination and thereby making way for greater relevance of higher music education in Europe and beyond.

"VOX early MUS aimed to improve the quality and relevance of higher music education through creating a joint master program on vocal early music small ensembles, at the excellency level. Under this frame, prestigious teachers, students and professionals from European conservatories and potential employment institutions gathered in order to exchange good practices on innovative methods and approaches in teaching, learning, assessing and performing vocal early music, taking into account four important dimensions: internationalization, vocal pedagogy, artistic performance and professional integration.Having young specialized professionals in vocal early music appears as an evident need nowadays: quality, professionalism, true aesthetic values are the alternatives this music offers. Thus, implementing vocal early music for small ensembles in the university curriculum - as a joint master program - arised as a common need of the partner institutions. This new learning offer in music education leads the students and graduates to identify new professional competencies and wider career opportunities. Partner institutions in VOX early MUS:1. National University of Music Bucharest - coordinator (Romania)2. Den Haag Royal Conservatory (Netherlands)3. ""Joseph Haydn"" Conservatory, Eisenstadt (Austria)4. ""Arrigo Pedrollo"" Conservatory of Vicenza (Italy)5. ""Arrigo Boito"" Conservatory of Parma (Italy)6. Association of European Conservatories - AEC (Belgium)7. Fondazione Italiana per la Musica Antica - Rome (Italy)8. National Choir Association - Bucharest (Romania)VOX early MUS addressed both direct and indirect beneficiaries - as target groups. More than 90 students - from five European conservatories - who have the vocal skills, knowledge and a special interest in approaching and understanding vocal early music - benefited of the intellectual outcomes of the Transnational Project Meetings and tested the innovative teaching methods put in act during the three Intensive Programmes. All the activities during the three years (Steering group meeting, Transnational Project Meetings and Intensive Programmes) were connected to the main objective of the project: ellaborating a new Master programme for Early music small vocal ensembles, based on the two intellectual outputs: Curriculum design and development handbook on vocal early music small ensembles (O1) and ""VOX early MUS mastering excellence"" - an electronic didactic support (O2). The working group consisted in 13 experts and teachers from all the partner institutions, with a high level of expertise and experience in the early music field. Due to the project's needs, the working group splitted in two sub-groups, focused on: 1. Curriculum design and development: preparation of the Joint Master Programme (chair: Isaac Alonso de Molina - Den Haag Conservatoire) and 2. Repertoire research: collecting the research studies of the institutions in the field of vocal early music and preparing the three Intensive Programmes (chair: Nicolae Gheorghita - UNMB) . The two sub-groups cooperated ""in parallel"" between and during the Transnational Project Meetings. Collaborative tools have been used in order to facilitate the ""distance collaboration"": online platforms to exchange information, research studies, repertoire suggestions, list of Intensive Programmes participants and organisation, Skype sessions, etc. The three Intensive Programmes have been conceived as a laboratory for the future Master programme. Each of them gathered together 30 students (6/conservatoire) and 6 to 12 teachers and experts during eight days of Voice-labs, where the theoretical aspects and perspectives have been put in act through one-to-one and ensemble training, body awareness, workshops of improvisation, ornamentation, conferences, lectures and artistic performances. The Multiplier event - has been organized by the AEC and hosted by the National University of Music Bucharest, between 25th and 26th of May 2018 as an important dissemination opportunity for the project. Co-organized within the Early Music Platform of the AEC, the event gathered European experts from the Early Music field. Along with the main activities of the project, the management played an important and constant role - shared between the coordinator institution and the partners - being responsible for the quality assurance of the planned and implemented activities, expected results, impact on the target groups and project sustainability.The newly formed consortium on vocal early music pedagogy will continue to provide teachers and students in order to make functional the Joint Master Programme. Based on the principles and the intellectual outputs, this master program ensures a clear and formalized structure, internationally-oriented towards the students and the employment market.Besides the existing partners, VOXearlyMUS is open for additional institutions interested in participating at the Joint Master Programme."

Reflective Entrepreneurial Music Education Worldclass - RENEW’ is a two years project (2016-2018) developed by five higher music education institutions (The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus, The Royal Conservatoire The Hague, The Norwegian Academy of Music, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Sibelius Academy) and a European network organization (The Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen - AEC). The project has directly contributed to the improvement of the employability of future music graduates through the artistic, pedagogical and entrepreneurial development of higher music education studies while initiating a cultural shift within institutions by changing teachers’ mind-set and approaches to guiding students through their programmes-Developing an entrepreneurial mind-set, including instinctively self-critical and reflective processes. During the two years of the project implementation, the six RENEW partners have worked together on the development of tools and models to generate change inside institutions. Each project partner has planned, hosted and successfully delivered five student bootcamps (one per HME partner institution) involving both teachers and students from very different disciplines and providing them with conceptual tools placing entrepreneurship in the wider context. In addition, the RENEW consortium has organised a joint entrepreneurial staff training for teaching staff that has brought together international experts to design staff development sessions aimed at teaching staff members involved in promoting an entrepreneurial mind-set within institutions as well as regular teaching staff members.Based on the experience and know-how gathered during the project teaching/learning/training activities, the RENEW project consortium has provided HME institutions with a description of how to implement a Joint European Module for Entrepreneurship teaching. The concrete results give guidelines about the establishment of several Joint European Modules mixing elements both at local and international level. The joint module description includes information on the curriculum in terms of content, workload and teaching methodologies- Arrangements for admission and assessment- Quality assurance arrangements- Models for financial sustainability in terms of costs and tuition fees. In addition, the RENEW project has succeeded in expanding the entrepreneurial mind-set among HME institutions in Europe and helping them better understand the importance of this topic and the need of addressing it in order to be able to help future students engage and face the profession. The partner institutions participating in the project have develop tools and expertise that will allow them to implement entrepreneurship in their curricula and train their teaching staff for them to be able to answer the challenges involved in preparing students for the profession. In the long term, not only the institutions that have directly participated in the development of the project will see be benefit from the outcomes of the project but also all HME institutions inside the AEC network (around 90% of all the HME institutions in Europe) will count with models and tools to better embed entrepreneurship in their curricula.

"Context/background:When we started, there were many different local approaches and challenges both in implementing the Bologna process and to enhance the results from traditional mobility; participants approach to technology was non existing or basic: ""technology does not fit into music education"" was the common case. The Covid19 pandemic hit when the project was halfway, making distance teaching tools a ""must do"" activity, far beyond the expected project audience. This suddenly raised to ""survival importance"" many of the activities in the project, especially the ones to help teachers and students to use technology (example: ""how to use microphones and audio monitors correctly"", etc) . Covid19 also caused problems to many in presence activities, as for large ensembles, causing us to redefine the activities in O2 and O3. We had to expand our help desk and support activities in a few days to cope with an increase of support requests from 10 per month to 200 per day. Achieved Objectives: • a significant set of distance learning new modules were developed for various instruments and ensembles, larger than foreseen.- students could access modules which were not available in their institutions- institutions developed a consolidated collaboration, enabling activities beyond the project (additional masterclasses, new collaborations)- new relationships established among teachers and students, resulting in further proposed physical mobility when the pandemic permitted it again.- different and new teaching practices, enabled by technology, were tested to support distance learning.- LoLa was strongly enhanced: multiple sites to interact in real time, video support with additional cameras, additional audio sampling support,other features requested by teachers and students were added (better user interface, new way of controlling audio and video settings, better record/playback facility)- pedagogical studies were performed to understand the new environment, including the ""collective teaching"" approach allowed by LoLa technology- support training material - tutorials, examples etc - was developed to fulfil the ""show me a video how-to"" way of learning, instead of the traditional ""read the manual"" approach.Expected audience:- the number of students and teachers from the participating institutions was in line with expectations, despite the long pause imposed by Covid19 restrictions.Additional results:- we applied the know-how developed for LoLa and high performance networks also to other lower profiles tools (see Zoom, eduMEET, Teams,...) and to home network environments, supporting also ""at home"" distant music teaching;- we collected input and suggestions from an audience which was many order of magnitude larger than the expected one in the project, which then turned back with additional feedback and suggestions.New approach in roles and collaborations: The project participants developed new way of collaboration, and all was learning from the other areas of expertise: this expanded to further parties ,other academic networks (ARNES, EEnet, LITnet, DeIC, Uninett) and other HME (EAMT Tallin, LMTA Vilnius for technical tests and DKDM Copenhagen, RC den Haag, Music Academy Oslo and Conservatorio Tomadini Udine for teaching modules) and even beyond the traditional set of HMEs, into smaller schools creating the kernel of a distance learning enabled and ""ready"" institutions. In total we involved more than 80 teachers, and 350 students in the formal SWING project sessions. Impact: Students and teachers enriched their training and now are more technology friendly. Institutions deployed more international and harmonised curricula , teachers exchanged a lot of information, learned from each other, involved students in discussions, creating a truly different learning environment. Also outside the project boundary there are many more institutions, including medium/small ones, which now are aware of technical tools, and formed a significant information exchange community about this. On a ""information dissemination list"" which we created out of the support contacts the project received, there are now about 400 people. Dissemination:Two multiplier events were delivered. One had to go online in conjunction with the 2020 AEC congress. We presented the first results, including the studies about the effect of using distance teaching tools, and presented LoLa v2.0 version. As it was online we had 420 participants, well above the expected numbers. The final multiplier event managed to go in presence again with the AEC 2021 congress, we had 85 attendees plus 46 online ones. In this we disseminated the final results, and discussed how new collaborations can take place now. Long Term Benefits: European higher music education started to become truly international, with better equal opportunities for students and teachers. The knowledge database created by SWING project will help in understanding the way to go."