ISME
ISME Facebook
ISME Twitter
ISME Instagram
ISME YouTube
Home / News / Report from the 3rd Biennial Finnish National Conference of Music Education
Petri Aarnio
Report from the 3rd Biennial Finnish National Conference of Music Education
20 Nov 2017
Petri Aarnio, President, Finnish Society for Music Education (FISME)

The Biennial Finnish National Conference of Music Education organised by the Finnish Society for Music Education (FiSME) was held on October 27-28, 2017. The conference was organised in co-operation with the Sibelius Academy at the University of Arts in Music Centre of Helsinki, in the heart of the beautiful capital of Finland. The conference was part of a 60 years anniversary week of music teacher education in Finland organised by the music education department of the Sibelius Academy. 

The conference was divided into two days. On the first day participants were people who are working as professionals in the field of music education. Among the 300 participants were teachers of all music education sectors: early childhood, itinerant and instrumental teachers, music therapy, primary and secondary school teachers, tertiary, university teachers and teacher education teachers and, of course, music education students from all over Finland.

The program offered keynotes, workshops and concerts of different themes of music education such as arts education in daycare, music as a tool in the welfare system, pedagogy of composing for children and other ages, international instrumental teaching with video connections, co-operation between primary schools and private music schools, drum circles, learning Finnish by singing for immigrants, etc etc…

The second day was open to the public with the same themes. The whole program was offered without a fee. The program included concerts for babis, concerts for children, ukulele workshops, instrumental pop-ups, instrument path for schoolchildren, concerts arranged by music schools and institutes and music education students, and a gathering together of a folk music orchestra based on the method Näppärit. At the Music Centre of Helsinki were about 2000 people during the day.

This all is possible with almost no funding by all the most important music education actors of the country combining together. Crowdsourcing and dealing of experiences in planning the program is the focus. The size of the actor is not important. This means that every actor could give an input to the program and show others the most relevant themes in the field they represent.

The Finnish ISME is very thankful for Sibelius Academy but also to all the music education actors in the Finnish music life. The 4th Biennial National Conference ”The many faces of international activity in Finnish Music Education” will be held in the autumn of 2019. We hope we will then have enough experiences to say proudly: ”Welcome in ISME 34th World Conference in Helsinki 2020. 

Petri Aarnio, president

Finnish Society for Music Education
https://fisme.fi 
https://fisme.fi/perjantai/ (Program for professionals in Finnish)
https://fisme.fi/lauantai/ (Program for public in Finnish)

The photographs below are from a folk music gathering together with the method Näppärit by Mauno Järvelä and Kapyla: 60th anniversary concert of Käpylä Music Institute in the conference

  • Petri Aarnio
  • Folk music gathering at FISME
  • Kapyla at FISME
  • FISME

 

Routledge
sempre
sage
NAMM