Transformation. Music Mediation as a Game Changer: Call for Contributions
Transformation is not understood as a plannable optimization, but as a profound, open-ended process that makes music accessible in all its genres and facets. However, the role of music mediation as a key agent and architect of transformation remains insufficiently explored and theorized. This issue will include selected contributions from the 2025 conference “Transformation – Music Mediation as a Game Changer” held at the Bruckner University in Linz (Austria), as well as new contributions submitted in response to this open call, which will bring in contrasting, new international perspectives. We invite theoretical, empirical, artistic-research, and practice-based articles as well as portraits or interviews with music mediation practitioners. Interdisciplinary perspectives – drawing from music sociology, psychology, education, cultural studies, arts management, and related fields – are especially welcome.
Deadline: 31.12.2025
Nähere Informationen finden Sie hier: Link
Participatory Opera and Music Theatre
in collaboration with SIMM (Social Impact of Music Making)
Guest Editor: Lukas Pairon, founder SIMM
Opera and music theatre, traditionally associated with grandeur, hierarchy, and exclusivity, are undergoing profound transformations. Across continents, a growing number of artists, institutions, composers, and communities are reimagining these art forms through participatory practices – where creation is not done only for but also with others. Whether embedded in schools, hospitals, neighbourhood centres, prisons or refugee shelters, these projects invite a radical shift: they challenge established notions of authorship, virtuosity, and audience, while exploring how collective artistic processes can foster social engagement, visibility, and even transformation.
We are particularly interested in contributions that address how these projects are imagined and implemented: How do composers and creative teams navigate the balance between artistic vision and shared authorship? What new aesthetic languages emerge when artistic professionals collaborate with community members whose life stories, bodies, voices, and identities reshape the narrative? And what are the institutional challenges when large cultural structures take on participatory work – is it genuinely transformative, or does it risk becoming a marginal gesture in order to ‘tick the box’ of social inclusion?
Papers (6,000–8,000 words) should be submitted via the IJMM online platform and follow the journal’s style guidelines.
Abstracts (max. 200 words) and author bios (max. 150 words) should accompany each submission.
Deadline: 31.05.2026
Nähere Informationen finden Sie hier: Link