Together with the European Music Therapy Confederation, we would like to present the 10TH EUROPEAN MUSIC THERAPY CONFERENCE as a place and an opportunity to further develop music therapy as a profession and an area of scientific research. All participants will be encouraged to discuss topics relevant to the profession and its backgrounds, disseminate newest research, share experiences and knowledge, and generally engage in exchange, networking, and mutual learning with colleagues from all over Europe and beyond.
This conference is being jointly organised by the two Austrian EMTC associations (ÖBM, WIM) and the training programme at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw). In the spirit of national collaboration, the Association for Ethno Music Therapy and the training programmes in Krems and Graz are also supporting this event.
In the context of sustainability and environment protection, we are planning the conference in an environmentally friendly fashion. We strive to minimise the strain on the environment caused by the conference, for instance by increasing power efficiency and reducing waste, and we aim at organising the 10TH EUROPEAN MUSIC THERAPY CONFERENCE according to the criteria of the Austrian eco-label as a Green Meeting.
Entering into and maintaining dialogues may be seen both as a key purpose and a core competence of music therapists. With this conference’s theme, “A Symphony of Dialogues”, we would like to facilitate dialogue in all its manifestations within music therapy: Apart from investigating and reflecting on the multitude of forms that dialogues can assume within clinical settings, we also want to focus on feasible forms of dialogue between theory, research, training, and clinical practice. Other areas of dialogue related to our field are those between music therapy and adjacent fields such as medicine, education, or counselling, as well as health economics and political dimensions of dialogue.
We also like to view the event of the conference itself as an embodiment of dialogue in all its various shapes and forms. Participants are invited to actively engage in these dialogues and to integrate familiar and novel knowledge and experiences in a way that is meaningful both to them and their own work, and for the field of music therapy in general.
There will be diverse opportunities to join in dialogues not only in a conceptual way, but of course also in a literal sense and by means of musical improvisation…after all, aside from its meaning denoting a large-scale orchestral composition (naturally quite familiar in the Viennese context), “symphony” as derived from its Greek origin still means “sounding together”.
It is important to us to acknowledge previous music therapy conferences throughout Europe. Over the last three decades, this special history of dialogues in music therapy has had impacts on the development on music therapy on all conceivable levels ranging from international research collaborations to individual advancement in professional identity.
In the Vienna conference, we would like to continue the lines of dialogue and exchange that have emerged from previous conferences, accumulating all these voices to a vibrant and sonorous symphony of dialogues.