
1031 CL Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Musicians Without Borders offers several types of training for professionals in music leadership. Based on our working principles and methodology, our trainings are based on expertise developed from working in current and post-conflict regions.
Please see our current course listings for upcoming trainings.
A 2 day introductory course to Musicians Without Borders’ principles and methodology.
A 4 day practical course to expand the knowledge and skills in music leadership.
A 6 day in-depth course to gain skills and experience in facilitating training for music leaders.
Trainings for musicians who wish to work with refugee communities in Europe.
We offer external and tailored trainings and/or workshops in community music for organizations, business, conferences and universities. To discuss your specific requirements, please contact [email protected]
Musicians Without Borders offers professional training in music leadership based on our working principles and expertise developed from years of working in current and post-conflict regions. Below is an overview of upcoming trainings by and with Musicians Without Borders.
For more information please contact Meagan Hughes at: [email protected]
Are you looking for practical tools to engage your students or participants, across language and cultural barriers, in increasingly diverse and complex situations? Do you want to lead music activities that help participants self-regulate their emotions and behavior? How can you best create a safe space in a music workshop or classroom? How do you use music as a support for managing conflict?
Musicians Without Borders is offering a practical training in music leadership, developed by experts with years of experience in current and post-conflict regions. Past participants of our trainings have gone on to apply their skills in settings like refugee camps and asylum seeker centers, peace education workshops, local communities facing complex issues, juvenile detention centers and community choirs.
The training will take place in July 22-25, 2021 (arrival on July 21). Our trainings are held in Akoesticum in Ede, the Netherlands.
(Original February dates postponed due to COVID regulations)
The rate for this training is €895. This includes training fees, material costs, and room and board. Participants must cover their own travel expenses.
We’re following the health and safety guidelines for coronavirus as mandated by the Dutch government. We’ve worked with our partner, Landesmusikakademie NRW in Germany, to adapt our regular trainings to fit these guidelines and measures. For more details, please check our terms and conditions.
Have a question about a training? Here are some of our Frequently Asked Questions.
Our training programs share the knowledge and skills of Musicians Without Borders’ trainers with individuals from a variety of musical levels and backgrounds who are actively involved or wish to be involved in different programs combining music and social change.
Our courses are based on three core focal points, using practical music activities to illustrate these points:
Goals:
To join our musical leadership training, you should have:
Our training programs address skills across four subject areas: pedagogical, didactic, musical, and workshop leadership.
Pedagogical skills refer to the behavior and attitude of the workshop leader. Strong pedagogical skills can enhance emotional and social well-being, receptiveness of participants, and feeling of safety within the group. These are crucial in (post) conflict areas. The workshop leader uses didactic skills to transfer knowledge and build competence within the group. This refers to the how of leadership. Workshop leadership skills define the preparation needed to carry out a workshop. This involves the preparation of the structure and content of the workshop, ensuring optimal environmental conditions, and taking an inventory of the materials needed.
We focus on how to use music as a tool for peace-building and social change. We do not provide musical instruction per se, rather we use musical activities such as drum circle facilitation, singing, movement, songwriting, and improvisation in order to illustrate and fully utilize the power of music and nurture a culture of nonviolence.
Musicians Without Borders trains (adult) workshop leaders to work predominantly with children and young adults and teach others to do so as well, with the understanding that introducing skills related to cooperative music making and nonviolence at a young age can help to influence social change across generations. While some activities that we use in the training are child-oriented, we encourage our trainees to think creatively to adapt these activities for their own target groups through small group work. We also see the inherent value of playfulness that is embedded in these activities as useful skill sets to explore across age groups, encouraging creativity, helping to construct valuable problems-solving skills and building empathy among participants.
Musicians Without Borders grounds its approach to peace-building in the conviction that, while cultural differences often come to play a role in war and armed conflict, they are almost never the real root of the conflict, but often the tools of those who benefit from the conflict.
While we often work in places that have been divided along ‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’ lines, ‘intercultural dialogue’, as it is usually understood, is not part of the practice of Musicians Without Borders. The idea of ‘intercultural dialogue’ implies that the problems of post-war communities have their roots in cultural differences and can be addressed by bringing representatives of the different ‘cultures’ into contact and engaging them in conversation with each other.
To support processes of re-connection without identifying people by ethnic or cultural labels, Musicians Without Borders works to create a neutral musical space in which participants can both identify themselves and relate to each other primarily through music. We take their talents, passions, and potentials seriously and offer them real chances for musical growth and creative development, contact, and connection with individuals they may not otherwise have the chance to meet. We then trust the music to do its work and leave it to them to choose whether, and how, to meet ‘the other’ outside the musical space. What we invariably see is friendships emerging, along with empowerment and a feeling of relief at not being primarily defined by ethnicity, religion or culture.
Yes! Visit our Resources & Publications page to learn more.
The contexts in which Musicians without Borders work are often fragile and challenging. Resources can be limited, and the difficulties faced by people can be extreme. The trust that has been developed with our partners and their beneficiaries is vital, and the well-being of participants in our programs is always our primary concern. When we do have occasional openings in our international projects, we have to consider any placement of personnel very carefully. Therefore, only a select number of training participants may have the opportunity to work as a ‘trainer intern’ within one of our programs. This consideration would be based on a mutual fit between the skill sets of the individual and the needs of the program and would be on a voluntary basis.
Click here to read testimonials and see what past training participants have to say about our courses.
Participants are encouraged to seek out funding sources within their own communities or organizations to cover the cost of participation, however, a limited number of scholarships may be available on request.
We recommend the following funding resources supporting artist mobility:
For further questions, contact Meagan Hughes at: [email protected]