Outreach in Music -Social Learning-

1. Project Outline

The Outreach Project at the School of Music, Kobe College, encourages students to study music subjectively by freeing musical education from its conventional academic or concert hall framework. The word “outreach” signifies “to reach further,” or “to step out from the normal range.”

In order to perform at everyday locations such as primary/junior high schools and hospitals, musicians must produce programs that quickly engage the audience. Therefore, the aim of this project is to help students develop their self-production, communicative, and management abilities, based on a mutual understanding with others.

This can also be called “community-based art management by musicians,” since it is produced by the music students themselves. At the same time, music students can be provided with regional internships, which develop students’ career prospects while practicing the motto of Kobe College: “Love Thy God, Love Thy Neighbor.”

2. Project Processes

This project was first introduced after a nine-month discussion by the faculty committee for curriculum reform, based on surveys done with both the graduates and current students of our School of Music, as well as 202 nearby primary and junior high schools.

Since the second semester of 2001, lectures titled “Outreach in Music” were given to the junior students of the Undergraduate School of Music. In 2002, practical training on that theme was started with senior students. The chart on the following page briefly explains how students learn at each stage of the project.

Students who enter the School of Music at Kobe College study harmonics, music history,and other classes, in addition to performance lessons for their major instruments. At the same time, they take high level classes in general education courses such as linguistics, liberal arts, and science, making the most of the merits of studying at a small college. In the second semester of their junior year, students learn the basic concepts of the Outreach Project and how to plan appropriate programs for “Outreach in Music.”

In their senior year, students start to prepare for leaving the campus for their practical training. First, they contact those requesting their services (such as schools and hospitals), hold discussions with them, grasp their expectations, and examine the venue. Next, they design programs for the concerts and reconsider them before making suggestions for further discussion.

Students also make a time schedule for practices, arrange methods for transporting necessary musical instruments, repeat practical lessons, and do rehearsals up until the day of the concert.

After the concert, students hold a review meeting and submit reports on which their evaluation for credits will be based. Evaluation is done for each student based on daily contributions to class discussions, quality of the programs, arrangement techniques, performance results, and the quality of the report.

There are three major activities: 1) to provide primary and junior high schools with a concert where children experience playing musical instruments, 2) to provide hospitals and museums with concerts, with programs matching the season or the exhibition theme, and 3) to host concerts for children at the Kobe College campus. We have already dispatched 24 outreach programs to local primary/junior high schools, held 14 concerts at hospitals and other facilities, and hosted 11 concerts for children (ten sessions as part of a series)in the first three years. Please refer to the back page for the details.