Tag: symposium

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Thoughts after the symposium

The Women–Music–Futures symposium brought together a wide range of presentations based on both artistic and research projects. While the presented projects offered varied insights on women’s musical activities around the world, several common themes emerged. For example, a number of projects emphasized music as a space of comfort, respite, and pleasure for women musicians and their audiences. At the same time music making can provide a sphere where women can build solidarity and networks of mutual support. Sometimes music provides a medium for voicing one’s opinion to the outside world.

– Nina Öhman

It was liberating and empowering to see same issues relating to women musicians repeat in different contexts around the world, and to see that I am not to only one who has paid attention to the minority position of women musicians and wants to change things! Women face similar challenges, although the circumstances may be very different, and it was great to see all the different ways in which people are addressing these issues.

– Jenni Hanikka Continue reading “Thoughts after the symposium”

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Women – Music – Futures

International symposium at the University of Helsinki

March 9th and 10th 2023

Pre-symposium concert on March 8th, International Women’s Day

Call for Proposals

In many communities around the world, women are important culture bearers fostering the transmission of local traditions to future generations. However, women also forge new roles in their communities in order to express themselves and to get their voices heard. In these efforts for empowerment, music can serve as a tool for refashioning oneself and one’s place in society, thereby building futures that might not have been possible otherwise. Music also frequently serves as a space for imagination and dreaming, for experimentation with alternative ideas about the past, the present, and the future.

The aim of this symposium is to discuss the agency of women musicians worldwide, and the ways in which they use music to construct imaginary or real futures for themselves. Often working in patriarchal environments and restricted by social norms and expectations of their communities, women demonstrate significant resilience and creativity as they seek to create space for musical activities. In this regard, mutual support and networks between women are important. Sometimes women choose music because it provides a platform for presenting their views and/or influencing their communities in ways that would not be allowed otherwise.

Continue reading “Women – Music – Futures”