Institute for Early Childhood Music Education

The Institute for Early Childhood Music Education is part of a wider network of organisations dedicated to the study and promotion of music education in early childhood care. The issue of precisely how musical sensibility, knowledge, and artistic ability develop within socio-cultural contexts has received little attention in the research community.

Our goals:

• Support the on-going development of the Elementary Music Education programmes at the University of the Arts (incl. the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in Higher Education) and anchor this area of studies firmly within the practice of music education in Bremen.
• Drive the structural development of research and tuition processes at regional and national levels, and create a centre of theoretical studies at the University of the Arts through the documentation of practical projects.
• Link research initiatives across Germany with the aim of initiating individual projects and pooling interests and support resources.
• Create infrastructure capable of supplying know-how to academic staff at other institutions of higher learning who wish to pursue research initiatives in this area.
• Track the latest research on music education processes in early childhood and present this information in an effective manner to a wider public.

Since 2014, the HfK and the ‘Institute for Musical Education in Childhood’ - funded by the Federal Ministry of Research and Education - have been developing new and innovative study and further education programmes at universities of the arts in the field of music education and cultural mediation in two large-scale research projects. The background to this is the irrefutable social need for committed and qualified music, art and culture professionals in daycare centres, schools and cultural institutions in Germany. The aim of both projects is to open up artistic universities to new target groups and to open up new professional and occupational fields for people in music professions such as musicians, singers, dancers, etc.

The aim of the three-year project is to develop, test and evaluate a pedagogical training concept for artists and musicians who want to expand their artistic activities with general pedagogical and music didactic qualifications. Scientific-theoretical content is to be supplemented by pedagogical-practical components (trial courses, internships) in cooperation with daycare centres and other cooperation partners. The main aim is to develop a well-founded qualification concept that can be used in the further training of music and cultural professionals for their work with children and young people.

The aim of the project, which will initially run for three and a half years, is to use new study formats to remove barriers to studying at a university of the arts and thus open it up to new target groups.

As part of the project, study and further education formats are to be developed and trialled for the first time in order to give additional target groups access to the educational programmes offered by universities of the arts and to integrate options and modules for lifelong learning specific to universities of the arts into their study programmes.

There is an undeniable need in Germany for specialists with artistic and music education qualifications. Universities of art and music will also have to face up to this educational and cultural policy challenge in future and - in addition to the existing traditional university degree programmes - develop and offer additional educational and further training programmes for people with a high affinity for music and music-making. The project aims to analyse needs and potential, identify target groups, design and test pilot measures and evaluate and document the results.