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.
PROGRAM – ONSITE
Onsite Sessions Programme
José Luis Aróstegui Plaza
The Educational Loom: Transversal Competences and the Emancipatory Power of the Arts in the Face of 21st-Century Challenges
University of Granada, Spain
José Luis Aróstegui Plaza is a Professor of Music Education at the University of Granada. He is Head of the SEJ-540 Research Group in Music Education and Principal Investigator of project PID2021-128645OB-I00 on Transversality, Creativity, and Inclusion in School Music Projects: An Evaluative Research (TCIEM). He has been included in the World's Top 2% Scientists list compiled by Stanford University (2023 and 2025 editions).
Gunter Kreutz
Music, health and wellbeing in the 21st century - prospects and challenges
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.
University of Oldenburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Gunter Kreutz studied in Marburg, Berlin, and San Francisco, received his doctorate from the University of Bremen, habilitated at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and has taught systematic musicology at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg since 2008. Psychological, physical, and social meanings of music-making, singing, and dancing among laypeople are at the forefront of his research interests. He is the author and editor of numerous professional publications as well as two non-fiction books. Finally, he is a member of various associations, e.g., German Society for Music Psychology (DGM), European Society for Music Perception and Cognition (ESCOM), reviewer for numerous journals, and founding editor of the online journal Music Performance Research. His research has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Smaragda Chrysostomou
Reimagining Music Education: critical listening, creativity and the digital classroom
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.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr Smaragda Chrysostomou is Professor of Music Pedagogy and Didactics at the Department of Music Studies, School of Philosophy, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She teaches in the Department of Primary Education at the School of Education at NKUA. She also teaches at the MA “Music Education” long-distance course at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. She was the coordinator of the Aesthetic Education Committee for the national project “DIGITAL SCHOOL: Specifying a Digital Educational Platform, Building and Operating an Educational Knowledge Base, Adapting and Annotating Learning Objects with Educational Metadata, Building the Infrastructure to Support Exemplary Teaching Practices and the Use of the Participatory Web”. She is the coordinator of the Arts & Culture Committee at the National project “Digital transformation and enrichment of educational context”. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Board of the International Society for Music Education (2016–2020) and also as chair and commissioner for ISME’s Commission for Music in the Schools and Teacher Education (MISTEC). She is the Director of the Music Education Lab at the Department of Music Studies (musicedulab.music.uoa.gr). She is the Director of the postgraduate program (MA) “Music Education in formal and informal environments” (program page). Current research interests include: music teacher education, music and arts integration, curriculum and instruction, assessment in the music classroom, digital technology in music education, music learning in formal and informal environments. More information: scholar.uoa.gr/schrysos.
Yannis Mygdanis
Niarchos Foundation Sound Routes: A Soundwalk Experience
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.
Yannis Mygdanis
From Field Recordings to Electroacoustic Music Creation: A Pedagogical Perspective
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.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr. Yannis Mygdanis is a music educator, composer, researcher, and digital educational music software designer. He serves as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where he teaches in the MA “Music Education in Formal and Informal Environments”. His postdoctoral research focused on the development of the “Music Education 4.0” post-digital, anthropocentric music-educational framework, integrating emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and STREAM practices, while his doctoral dissertation examined the development of educational software in music education. He holds four master’s degrees in Music Education, Advanced Teaching, Educational Leadership, Administration and Emerging Technologies, and Information Systems, along with music diplomas in Piano, Choral Conducting, and Composition. He has participated in more than 50 international conferences and has published a comparable number of scientific works. As a composer, he has presented works for theater, short films, fairy tales, children’s songs, and electroacoustic music, and has released scores, song cycles, and digital singles. In parallel, he is actively involved in the design and development of digital music software, including Synth4Kids, DJ Ostomachion, Byzantune, the MusApps applications for Greek Music Schools, and C Blues Jam Keys! He also participates in several scholarly associations in Greece and abroad and works as a music teacher at the Elementary School of Pierce – The American College of Greece. More information: www.yannismygdanis.com.
Angeliki Triantafyllaki
Narratives of Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories (MEAMs): A Participatory Workshop on Biographical Research
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
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr. Angeliki Triantafyllaki is Assistant Professor of Music Pedagogy at the Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds PhD and MPhil degrees from the University of Cambridge and, since 2008, has been conducting research and teaching in the areas of music pedagogy, music technologies, music teacher education, and research methodologies in music education. She has published more than 60 scholarly works in international journals, books, edited volumes, and conference proceedings, and has received funding for postdoctoral research, including awards from the British Academy and the Greek State Scholarships Foundation.
She currently serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Music Education, Psychology of Music, and EpoME (EAS), and is a member of the NKUA Research Ethics Committee. During the past two decades, she has participated in large- and medium-scale research projects. She is currently a member of the Erasmus+ TEAM project, which aims to reshape initial and continuing music teacher education and school music education in Europe.
Dimitra Trypani
FROM EAR TO BODY: Auditory Reboot Method
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.
Ionian University, Greece
Dimitra Trypani studied composition at the University of Edinburgh, where she completed both her MMus and PhD with distinction under the supervision of Nigel Osborne, and Greek philology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. As a composer, she is engaged in the creation of contemporary musical theatre works, aiming to eliminate the “seams” between music and speech through the use of choral polyphony and polyrhythm as primary compositional tools.
Since 2017, she has been a permanent external collaborator of the Greek National Opera, leading educational workshops and contributing as a composer, while many of her music theatre works have been performed there. She was Composer in Residence at the Paxos Festival for seven years and has taught composition, ear training, and interdisciplinary performance techniques at universities in Greece and the UK. She has also conducted dozens of workshops based on her auditory reboot method From Ear to Body. This year, she began a collaboration with the National Theatre through an annual workshop cycle on the method. She is Professor of Theory and Composition with Interdisciplinary Practices at the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University.
Elisavet Perakaki
Collaborative Music-Making in Ensembles: From Interpretation to Creation
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.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Elisavet Perakaki is a PhD and postdoctoral researcher and a member of the Special Educational Staff at the Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research focuses on music in early childhood, formal education, and lifelong learning, and she collaborates on a range of music education programs. She is the co-author of five Greek books and serves as President of the Greek Society for Music Education, as well as Chair of MISTEC (ISME). She is currently involved in the Erasmus+ project TEAM, which focuses on music teacher education and school music across Europe.
Christiana Adamopoulou
Playing Music – Playing with Music
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.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Christiana Adamopoulou, PhD, MA, is a music therapist and a member of the Specialized Educational Staff at the Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has twenty years of experience teaching music in both mainstream and special needs schools. Since 2019, she has also worked as a music therapist at the Lilian Voudouri Creative Arts Therapies Institute. In addition, she is trained in group psychoanalytic psychotherapy.