SMEI Chairperson’s Report 2021,
AGM Saturday 8th May, 2021
Dr Lorraine O’Connell, Chair, SMEI
Friends, colleagues and distinguished guests,
You are all most welcome to this year’s AGM and thank you so much for attending. Forced by the circumstances of COVID-19 restrictions, this is a very different AGM. As I speak I think back fondly on our last conference in Jan 2020 when we had the opportunity to commune face-to-face – did we think then that only a few short weeks later our lives would be impacted to such an extent. Normally we would be in the throes of a conference, being stimulated at paper presentations and workshops, enjoying hearing live music, and getting an opportunity to catch up with our colleagues from elsewhere in the country and beyond our shores and to establish new friendships during coffee breaks. We certainly look forward to when we can engage in such activities again. I will return to the topic of a future conference shortly but while on the topic of conferences, I would like to re-articulate our gratitude to Dr Regina Murphy and Dr Marie Louise Bowe, together with their colleagues in DCU, for hosting such a well-organised and stimulating conference last year. We had over 50 delegates presenting on a wide range of interesting topics together with an inspiring and thought-provoking keynote paper given by from Prof Patricia Shehan Campbell. In addition, there was a fantastic range of live music from both professional musicians and our young developing musicians from both both sides of the country - the east and west coast.
The pandemic has inconveniently coincided with the 10th anniversary of the formal establishment of SMEI, and has thus interrupted our plans to celebrate this occasion. The original constitution was ratified and adopted at an inaugural one-day conference in November 2010. Early in 2020, the intention had been to plan for a celebratory 10th annual conference in the Winter of 2020/21 but alas the universe had other ideas …. Need I say more?
In addition to putting any plans for a conference on hold, of greater concern to us was the significant impact that the pandemic was having on music education across the board. All areas of people’s lives have been impacted by the pandemic but music making, music learning and teaching have been particularly affected across a number of areas. In the first instance, and to paraphrase authors such as Keith Swanwick, David Elliot, Thomas Regelski among others, music is what people do and as we know, so much of this doing, this practice of music takes place within social settings. Unfortunately the pandemic thrives in social setting, and so has brought a sudden halt to musical engagement across all formal and informal contexts. This issue has been further compounded by the fact COVID-19 is transmitted through aerosol spray and so that strong links have been made between singing and the playing of wind instruments with the rapid spread of the virus . In addition to the cancellation of all live music gatherings, no singing or instrumental playing in school, the move to online instrumental and vocal teaching all challenged music educators. Sadly, many music educators’ livelihoods and income streams have also been adversely affected.
One of the aims of SMEI, as stated in the Constitution is:
the advancement of education specifically in the field of music education, and to promote and foster research and practice in music education in all its forms throughout Ireland, north and south
As an umbrella organisation in support of all music education activities throughout the island of Ireland, there was a very strong feeling among committee members that SMEI had an important role to play in supporting individual educators and organisations involved in music education. To this end, the pandemic has given us the opportunity to consider alternative ways in which we can highlight, discuss and address the challenges posed by this dramatic lifechange. It was decided to run a series of webinars with the purpose of establishing a community of practice for all those involved in music education in all its guises across the island, and in the process, mark the 10th anniversary of the society. We were keen to appeal to and engage with a wide cohort of educators in the continuation and/or the return to music education within these unprecedented times. At this point I would like to acknowledge and sincerely thank the inordinate amount of work carried out by that initial sub-committee: Marie-Louise, Susan, June and Avril.
The 1st webinar, entitled ‘Setting the Scene for September’, took place on 24th August to coincidence with the return to in-person teaching in formal school settings. During this webinar, a range of music teachers shared their ‘tips and strategies for dealing with the ‘new normal’ that was emerging. This first webinar attracted huge interest with over 100 participants. This was followed up with a webinar at the beginning of November on the topic, ‘Lessons learned since September’ and again teachers shared their experiences. Since then, we have had 3 further webinars, covering a range of topics: No 3 focused on collaboration in music education, the 4th in January (to coincide with Mental Health issues) was around Wellbeing and Music Education and the final webinar took place in March facilitated debate and discussion around bands. We are particularly delighted that this most recent webinar involved colleagues from Northern Ireland. I think anybody who attended that webinar in particular would agree that it was at here that the impact of the pandemic on the music education community was most apparent and felt most acutely. In addition to raising issues around the impact on music-making, concerns for the future, about returning post-pandemic, were also raised; will young people re-engage with rehearsals? … will they be willing to commit to band? … what impact has the lack of rehearsing together had on young people’s standard of playing? … will traditional venues for rehearsal still be available? … etc
All webinars attracted a wide national audience and we also had a number of international participants. We had hoped that these webinars would prove to be a starting point for discussion and we did encourage attendees to continue to engage with us. While participants in each webinar did get involved in lively discussion, it was a challenging task to try to continue the conversation. If you were unable to attend the webinars, all have been recorded and are available within the ‘Members area’ of the website. If after watching one or a number of these videos you feel moved to ‘start the conversation’, please feel free to do so.
Returning to ‘normal’ whatever form that takes will inevitably bring another range of challenges. In addition to the issues raised during the seminars, we are aware that we will need to focus on caring for students, for teachers, for music-making contexts and for music education in general. SMEI has an important role to play here … in advocating for the future of music education in the country will form part of our remit for the year ahead. We are planning to run a conference in November which will include our postponed celebration of 10th anniversary of the society. Ideally we would like to plan for an in-person conference or at the very least a hybrid conference. However, it is not yet possible to plan for any of these options with confidence.
Finally, I would like to thank the hard-working committee. Similar to colleagues elsewhere, online teaching has been challenging and very time-consuming, so I want to acknowledge the volume of work and that added pressure of organizing and running the webinars, as well as regular committee meetings. However, there has also been a lot of lively and stimulating debate in organizing the webinars. While we all miss the face-to-face, one advantage has accrued from virtual rather than in-person meetings – there has been fuller attendance at meetings.
Hopefully the year ahead will be less challenging and the work of your committee will continue.
Thank you.
Dr Lorraine O’Connell, SMEI Chair