How do you inspire people to discover what they don't know?

As those involved in the music business are well aware, public cultural policies are expanding to promote awareness and education in the arts, while encouraging the cross-fertilization of initiatives in the field of social innovation. In an era of eclecticism and immediacy that questions the role and place of culture in our society, we're looking for art that serves a purpose, that develops a certain notion of profitability "for all".

In line with this evolution in social and political demand, many subjects are taking on a new awareness, fueled by the many roles that music can play in people's lives. In response, while some denounce the guilt-tripping of high standards and elevation in favor of a pseudo-good conscience that is supposedly egalitarian and leads to nothingness, others criticize a milieu of entre-soi imbued with arrogance and ancestral privileges.

In the midst of these growing upheavals, we need to bear in mind that the broadening range of missions surrounding music professionals (whether they work on stage or in the classroom) sometimes creates intimidating pressure for those who have never been made aware of these new issues.

Openness or conservatism

As indispensable transmission belts to the public, the missions of the music professions are in constant dynamic tension between an open-minded stance and a more conservative attitude, in order to arouse curiosity, open up to the richness of our heritage, and support the development of taste. They are expected to provide experiences that nourish the cultural capital of their audiences, while remaining at the heart of their profession, and to radiate out into a territory in which they know how to work with others, build and exchange knowledge.

As a result, while up until now the skills of music professionals were defined primarily by their high degree of specialization in artistic matters, today their scope of intervention extends beyond their disciplinary functions. These expanded missions highlight the need for multiple skills, as well as the importance of developing social, relational and organizational competencies in addition to the traditional base identified until now.

This situation also calls into question the responsibility of the education given to future music professionals, and the means used to support those who have been in place for years, because it's not because missions change and expand that players in the sector instantly acquire new skills.

It is in the midst of these shifts in responsibilities that the notion of "mediation" has entered the musical field, with a lexical terminology that refers to the context of negotiation. Seen as a remedy or as a symptom, depending on one's convictions, mediation becomes a way of naming both the unfulfilled objective of social justice in the distribution of cultural goods, and the need to refound the general paradigm of cultural democratization on other foundations, while at the same time raising the question of the legitimization of culture by the social. Whatever the case, mediation is at the heart of a number of issues that also extend to other aspects linked in particular to the image of musical institutions, their specifications, their financial resources and, in some cases, their sustainability.

But how is musical mediation deployed in the field?

What's clear is that mediation refers to a wide range of different approaches. In spirit, it encompasses a vast array of practices aimed at stimulating transmission and appropriation, covering audience development initiatives, developing cultural participation, fostering encounters between citizens and audiences through the development of sensitivity, otherness, subjectivity and a critical sense.

Music mediation is the stuff of many good intentions, guided by the justification of the new missions assigned and mentioned above. Marie-Christine Bordeaux, university professor and specialist in artistic and cultural education policies, explains: "Mediation is frequently perceived as an alibi, a smokescreen vaguely tinged with social conscience, designed to mask the immobility of the cultural system and the vested interests of some of its players".

Sometimes subject to the dictates of the bottom line, certain structures deploy mediation systems that evoke the idea that all that's needed is to bring artworks and (non-initiated) audiences together for an instant aesthetic encounter; others lower their prices to attract younger audiences who are deserting them, in the hope that lifting this barrier to access will create an airlift for new audiences.

Many creative initiatives come and go. Often conceived in response to injunctions, they sometimes tend to forget an essential element: we generally don't have a lack for what we don't know. Cultural and communication theorist Jean Caune sums it up this way: "How can we create aesthetic enjoyment if it is not based on processes that give rise to the desire for culture?

If the absence of lack (of classical music) is linked to the absence of desire, then shouldn't musical mediation schemes be primarily aimed at cultivating taste to arouse or give rise to this desire? Thinking of musical mediation as a means of nurturing cultural capital makes it possible to distinguish between modes of intervention and audiences: music doesn't particularly need mediation, it just depends on who it's addressed to.

Based on this line of reasoning, musical mediation becomes a professional gesture of identity for musicians wishing to invest in it, capable of deploying intervention strategies within a supported pedagogical dynamic. Following on from this line of thought, it would be worthwhile for many institutions to move on from experimentation with contexts to genuine professional development of content, enabling artists to find a renewed place and audiences to take flight.

Supporting change

Since 2010 and the acceptance of responsibility for professionalization as a central pillar, Switzerland's music colleges have been engaged in an ongoing process of reflection on the meaning, opportunities and connection between the teaching provided and the needs of the field.

Impacted by social transformations, they strive to offer the possibility of a diversification of knowledge aimed at training autonomous and responsible professionals, equipped with the tools necessary to accomplish their professions and the conditions for exercising them. It was on this basis that music mediation made its debut at the HEMU in 2014.

Based on specific intervention logics that encourage experience, imagining diversity and ways of accompanying it from a practical and theoretical viewpoint, musicians are coached in musical mediation, while remaining free to decide whether or not to engage in this approach. Starting out from the artistic identity of each individual, the students confront the conditions that enable an encounter between the work and the public, by adapting to the audiences they are addressing, thus realizing that while not everyone has the same cultural dispositions at the outset, it is possible to acquire them.

In response to numerous requests, the HEMU is innovating by creating a continuing education diploma (CAS) dedicated to musical mediation. After having devised a diploma a few years ago around musical initiations for the very young, this new continuing education course is in line with the considerations given to audiences by proposing to continue in-depth work on the civic function of art.

Essentially built on experience in a wide variety of fields with local partners (ensembles, orchestras, festivals, professional associations, music education), this CAS HES-SO in music mediation will provide a methodology for designing and developing targeted interventions using specific teaching resources and tools.

Through a reflective and then operational approach, students in this continuing education diploma will be helped to create and develop their personal projects, and to situate them in terms of philosophical, social, political and artistic issues, with a view to turning them into professional outlets.

For further information, please contact hemu.ch/cas

Thierry Weber is a music mediator. A conductor specializing in musical mediation, he is a professor at the HEMU and co-creator of ParteMus.