Call for papers

CFP – Music, Sound and Wellbeing
The second transdisciplinary symposium

Thu – Fri 9th and 10th of September 2021
University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu
Online-event

Invitation

The potential positive impact of arts on wellbeing have lately received attention. This symposium seeks to expand and interrogate the debate by focusing on the welfare impacts of sound in both physical environments and on the various sound-mediated sensuous and material practices that might or might not easily coincide with the formalised understandings of welfare. The symposium series “Music, Sound and Wellbeing” aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields to discuss the linkages of wellbeing with music, sound, acoustic environments, somatics and cultures of listening. We welcome presentations and workshops from everyone interested, including academics, professional staff, activists, students, and industry.

In 2021 online symposium we want to call for papers more focused on environmental sound qualities, immersive sound, art and act of listening connected to wellbeing, music as sound, music making as agency.

We wish to hear both intriguing case examples and emerging good practices as well as critical and theoretically rooted analyses and reports on experimental and artistic explorations around the topic. This symposium gives space to examine the role of technological development, e.g. the breakthrough of immersive audio, in reshaping and re-experiencing our sensory environment. It has also a practical purpose of providing a forum for critical discussion on the issues of the therapeutic and educational potential of sound and somatics, and for encouraging collaborations among experts in fields of art, technology and health.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • cultures and pedagogies of listening
  • therapeutic uses of music and sound
  • sound and holistic concept of human being
  • sound and somatics
  • immersive audio technologies and augmented reality
  • sound as part of the technologies of care
  • sound-related wellbeing in social policy and arts policy
  • the problems of measuring wellbeing and impacts of music and sound

Send your proposal with approximately 300 words including also answers to following questions:

  • what is the specific core of your presentation at the moment in terms of “wellbeing”
  • how does your topic connect to other imaginable orientations of this symposium?
  • describe shortly the qualities of the environments your presentation will listen to (e.g. hi-fi, lo-fi, “natural”, man-made, silent, vociferous)

Enter your presentation or workshop proposal here: Abstracts

Submission deadline extended to 13th of June 2021. The symposium is international and we accept proposals mainly in English, also in Finnish.  

No participation fee.

Important dates:

Proposals due: 13th of June 2021
Notification of acceptance: 2nd of July 2021
Registration for all participants: 2nd of July–7th of September 2021  
Symposium: 9th and 10th of September 2021

The program, including the keynote speakers, will be announced latest in August 2021.

More information: Symposium committee PhD Noora Vikman and MA Ida-Meri Havukainen, UEF, msw@uef.fi