The international symposium on 24 and 25 November 2022 in Ljubljana acquaints the audience with contributions "How children 'hear' art when art 'hears' children" by Katarina Zadnik, Katarina Habe and Katarina Kompan Erzar, "Efforts to connect music and medicine: current achievements of the three-year project B-AIR" by Ana Kuder, Manca Kok, Saška Rakef and Igor M. Ravnik, and "Radio plays: opening the doors to visual exploration with children" by Ana Čorić.
Efforts to connect music and medicine
The systematic research of the benefits of music in the treatment of physical and psychological conditions has only been developing over the past three decades. The authors present research on the possible ways to implement music into the Slovenian healthcare system, and the current achievements of the project: radio content for disseminating knowledge on the influence of music on humans, created as part of the "Soundings" broadcasts B-Air Zvočenja, a study on the thinking of musically engaged doctors concerning the implementation of music into healthcare, and the preparation of a prototype Hospital Radio being created by Radio Slovenia in cooperation with the University Children's Hospital in Ljubljana.
How children "hear" art, when art "hears" children
Radio plays for children are a challenge both for the creators and the children themselves, since their development in the preschool period is marked by holistic and highly emotional perception and experience. Authors explored which artistic elements of radio material can be used to invite preschool children into the world of sound art, and which radiophonic elements enable them to have an aesthetic experience, developing through this a sense of security, sensitivity and inner correspondence. The research was carried out with the help of three radio fairy tales for preschool children: Fearless Fairytale by Peter Svetina, She once Lived, She Still Lives by Nataša Konc Lorenzuti, and the First Superheroic Case of Pikec by Gaja Kos. Each has a specific structure of building blocks (sound, speech, music, rhythm, metre) and relationship between them.
Radio plays: opening the doors to visual exploration with children
Raising awareness of the importance of children's artistic worlds and their life experiences on stage is an important aspect for all artists who create and perform for and with children. During the symposium, author Ana Čorić will showcase the process of artistic exploration with children who actively participated in the radio theatre play Wars of the Worlds, staged by RadioTheatre Bajsić and Friends, a partner in the B-AIR project, in Zagreb during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using various everyday objects, children co-create sound (soundscapes) directly on stage, interacting with the actors and director. To complement their playful stage improvisation, the researcher designed a memory game performed on stage immediately after the performance to explore children's experiences.
About the symposium
In the framework of the International Scientific Symposium 2022: Opening the Doors to the Art and Science of Music, the organizers aim to present artistic research in different musical disciplines in connection with scientific research in the field of music pedagogy and related scientific disciplines. The two-day symposium features over 40 contributions dealing with current musical-artistic and musical-pedagogical themes relating to comprehensive music-art research and its interdisciplinary links, as well as the vertical of music and general school education, lifelong learning, various forms of non-formal learning and musical engagement. More information and a detailed program is found at the website of the Academy of Music.
