This season has taken d@rts across Europe, from a joint symposium at NERA in Aarhus to a symposium at the EAS conference in Vienna. Below, we share highlights from each stop, as project members presented findings, connected with sister projects and partners, and joined wider conversations on arts education, democracy and social justice.
d@rts at NERA 2026
At the NERA Conference in Aarhus, d@rts joined its Horizon Europe sister projects CLiViE and EXPECT_Art for a joint symposium, "Arts Education and Social Justice – Initial Findings from Three EU Horizon Projects."
The three projects form a cluster of Horizon Europe initiatives on Cultural Literacy, exploring how arts and education can foster dialogue, inclusion, and social change. The symposium offered a valuable opportunity to share emerging findings, identify connections across the projects, and strengthen collaboration within the Cultural Literacy cluster.
d@rts at the 33rd EAS Conference in Vienna
The European Association for Music in Schools (EAS) is an associated partner in dialoguing@rts, which made its 33rd conference a natural meeting place for the project. The conference took place in Vienna from 8 to 11 April 2026 under the theme Advance Democracy. Participation, Diversity, and Social Cohesion in Music Education. On 9 April, d@rts contributed a 90-minute symposium chaired by Jens Knigge (Nord University) and Rose Martin. The session ran in an empty chair format and brought together results from three of the project’s work packages.
Valerie Krupp (Nord University) and Julia Ehninger (University of Wuppertal) opened with WP2’s large-scale survey on cultural literacy education, now under way in five European and two non-European countries. They showed how the assessment framework was built together with participants, and what decolonising both the survey instruments and the reporting of results demands in practice.
Christian Rolle (University of Cologne), Eckehard Pistrick (Gustav Mahler Private University of Music) and Runa Hestad Jenssen (Nord University) presented WP3’s ethnographic case studies.
The German strand followed the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and its two experimental spaces, the ensemble Colourage and a transcultural Orchestra Academy. The Nordic strand drew on Huldance in Verdal, schools in Trondheim and Kokkola, Fargespill and the Council for Municipal Schools of Arts, tracing how aesthetic norms, teaching choices and structural conditions widen or narrow the paths to participation.
Ronja Kampschulte (University of Cologne) closed with WP4’s two residencies in Ulm, run with Krealab e.V. and the city’s Department of Culture. Sound walks, collaborative installations and improvisation sessions there gave rise to a weekly open jam that participants now organise themselves. The session went very well. Meeting in person gave the d@rts family a valuable chance to share its work face to face and to open new dialogues with colleagues across the field.