In an era of algorithmic playlists and background streaming, music educators face a dual challenge: cultivating critical listening skills while preparing students for unpredictable futures. This presentation argues that digital technology, far from distracting from deep musical engagement, offers powerful affordances for transforming how we teach aural literacy and creative musicianship.

Drawing on contemporary pedagogy and digital tools, this session explores how music educators can use technology to make musical thinking visible and interactive. Through visualization tools, digital audio workstations, and collaborative platforms, music teachers scaffold aural literacy in multisensory, non-linear, and democratized ways. Crucially, this presentation reframes the role of music educators: not as passive adopters of technology, but as creative agents who model how to integrate digital tools thoughtfully. Teacher education becomes a site where educators learn to experiment, adapt, and innovate in response to changing musical landscapes. By balancing technological affordances with ethical considerations—including discernment in an age of AI-generated music—we prepare students to become both critically engaged listeners and empowered creators.

This participatory workshop introduces biographical research as a broad methodological orientation for the study of musical lives, with particular emphasis on Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories (MEAMs) and music preferences. Drawing on qualitative research in the field of music psychology, the workshop begins from the premise that music can function as a particularly powerful catalyst for autobiographical recall.

Participants will be introduced to biographical research methodologies that employ a range of tools, including interviews, artefact elicitation, and visual-temporal methods. The session will then consider recent research on MEAMs and music preference as narrated, socially situated, relational, and emotionally textured aspects of lived experience. Participants are invited to bring to the workshop an artefact that strongly evokes for them a musical memory from one or more particular moments in time, such as childhood, adolescence, or the present. This artefact may be a photograph, a playlist, a physical object, a song, a letter, or another personally meaningful item.

Working with this artefact, participants will share their MEAMs in small groups and then create a musical timeline that maps significant people, places, periods, transitions, and listening practices across the life course. The timeline will serve as both a reflective and an analytic tool through which aspects of MEAMs can be discussed in relation to participants’ own musical biographies. By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained a practical introduction to biographical methods, experienced an artefact-based elicitation task, and produced a preliminary visual map for understanding their own MEAMs and music preferences.

Recommended reading: Lamont, A., & Loveday, C. (2020). A New Framework for Understanding Memories and Preference for Music. Music & Science, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043209483

Contemporary education systems remain structurally ill-equipped to respond to a VUCA world shaped by uncertainties and challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and social fragmentation. This presentation proposes transversal competences — framed not as a market concession but as an emancipatory project — as the essential warp of a renewed curriculum, with artistic and musical experience as their most powerful catalyst. It first establishes a theoretical framework of transversal competences and then introduces a research project recently carried out in Spain. Grounded in the empirical findings of the TCIEM Project (2022–2026) — involving twelve Spanish schools across all educational stages — this presentation demonstrates that interdisciplinary, project-based music education fosters critical thinking, inclusion, digital competence, and global citizenship, in line with UNESCO's Agenda 2030. Despite persistent structural barriers, the evidence confirms that music education is not a peripheral luxury, but an efficient pedagogical construct for forming critically engaged and empathetic citizens.

The auditory reboot method From Ear to Body consists of a comprehensive set of tools and techniques designed to reactivate auditory and rhythmic perception among musicians, actors, dancers, teachers, students of all levels, and professionals from different disciplines who work with groups. The method also seeks to introduce new ways of creatively integrating sound and rhythm into interdisciplinary educational, social, and artistic activities.

Its exercises move beyond familiar systems of musical notation and are grounded instead in the connection between hearing and the body, enabling sound to be decoded in a natural and embodied way. Through the structured use of the voice, asymmetrical rhythms, polyphony, polyrhythm, body percussion, and percussive choreography, participants explore sound as an integrated physical and auditory experience. At the core of the method lies choral sound and speech, aiming at the precise tuning of frequency and rhythm in the recitation of text by small or large groups. The presentation will be interactive, allowing participants to engage experientially with the method and gain a deeper understanding of how it works in practice.

This talk addresses how today’s stream of multiple crises has created a climate of uncertainty alongside deteriorating living conditions in many parts of the world. It considers the rising levels of anxiety and depression noted across countries and discusses strategies that can support wellbeing and resilience under increasing external pressures. A key focus is self-efficacy as a psychological mechanism linked to health and wellbeing. The session reflects on issues that emerged during the recent pandemic, including its profound negative consequences for the creative sector, and highlights the role of structured leisure activities in childhood and adolescence and their association with individual self-efficacy. The talk concludes by arguing that arts education in general, and music education in particular, can meaningfully improve life perspectives for younger generations and support them in pursuing goals within and beyond music.

This site-specific digital project explores the soundwalk as both a creative and pedagogical method for engaging with public space through listening, movement, and sonic documentation. Grounded in the principles of acoustic ecology and linked to the concept of the soundscape, it focuses on the sonic environment of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Cultural Center in Athens as a setting for embodied exploration and critical awareness.

Participants are invited to move through selected areas of the site, including the canal, open pathways, and quieter green spaces, while recording environmental sounds, acoustic textures, and brief auditory reflections. To support this process, a mobile application entitled Niarchos Sound Routes was specifically developed for the project. By integrating geolocation, mapping, and audio-recording functionalities, the application enables participants to document sounds in relation to location, movement, and perception. The walk is approached not as a passive route, but as an active method involving attentive listening, observation, and reflection. The project aims to create a collective sonic map, to examine how recorded sounds can be creatively expanded through technological means, and to encourage shared reflection on how public space can be experienced and understood through active listening.

This workshop explores the pedagogical potential of transforming field recordings into electroacoustic compositions through the use of authentic handmade digital musical instruments and interactive artifacts. Drawing on principles of acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, it approaches environmental sound not only as recorded material but also as a basis for creative reflection, critical listening, and collaborative music-making.

Participants will work with sounds collected during the soundwalk and engage in processes of selection, manipulation, layering, and reorganization in order to create an original electroacoustic composition focused on acoustic ecology, which will ultimately be performed for an audience. The workshop highlights the educational value of this process by combining listening, technological experimentation, and artistic decision-making. Through the innovative use of controllers, software, and digital interfaces, participants are encouraged to rethink the relationship between environment, sound, and musical expression. In this framework, technology functions not simply as a sound-processing tool but as a pedagogical medium that supports exploration, interpretation, and composition. Ultimately, the workshop aims to cultivate active listening, creative agency, and a deeper understanding of how environmental recordings can be transformed into meaningful artistic and educational experiences.

Music in special education and music therapy are two distinct disciplines, each with its own aims and methodologies. At the same time, meaningful dialogue between these fields is both possible and necessary, as it enables educators to draw on the full range of musical experience for students with special educational needs, while also supporting inclusive practices in mainstream classrooms.

In this workshop, participants will explore, together with students enrolled in the course Music in Special Education, a range of approaches to meaningful musical experiences grounded primarily in musical improvisation and playful interaction.

This workshop explores collaborative music-making in ensemble settings, guiding participants through a process that moves from interpretation to creative production. It is designed for everyone, regardless of musical background or ability, and adopts an inclusive approach that values every voice, skill, and perspective.

The first part of the workshop focuses on interpretation through collective performance. Participants will engage in group singing and ensemble playing using accessible musical material, fostering an environment in which everyone can contribute meaningfully. The activities emphasize active listening, coordination, and shared musical decision-making, highlighting how ensembles can become spaces of connection, mutual respect, and inclusivity.

In the second part, the focus shifts from interpreting to creating. Inspired by photographs presented in an exhibition within the space, participants will collaborate in small groups to compose music. These visual stimuli encourage exploration of sound, texture, rhythm, and structure, while ensuring that each participant’s ideas are heard and included. Each group will then present its composition, showcasing a collaborative and inclusive creative process.

Overall, the workshop aims to demonstrate the potential of inclusive ensemble practices, showing how music can foster collaboration, creativity, intercultural dialogue, and a sense of belonging for everyone involved.