NEWS - CUMIN Conference 2023

CUMIN stands for Contemporary Urban Music for Inclusion Network and describes itself as “an inter-disciplinary cluster mixing researchers, practitioners and a range of stake-holders in educational and social projects of various kinds, fostering dialogue and production of new knowledge.”

On June 30th 2023 they brought together a wide range of presenters from music organisations across the UK as well as artists, workshop leaders and facilitators for a hybrid conference to consider some interesting questions:

• How can music education become more relevant to learner tastes and preferences in the 21st century?
• What would need to change to make this happen?
• What are the impacts on well-being that can arise from projects utilising contemporary urban musics for inclusion?
• How can we best evaluate such impacts?

These are significant questions for any music educator especially those who are trapped in outdated buildings or classrooms attempting to inspire the creators of the future with limited access to resources and technology which is often far inferior to what most of them can access readily outside school via their own devices, YouTube and their peers.

There is a challenge there too for teachers who may feel quite distanced from the music within their own local communities, especially those in international schools working within cultures and environments very different to those in which they themselves were educated...

So how can teachers access contemporary urban cultures relevant to their students and better understand their learners' tastes and preferences?

Conferences like this one are a great way to start.