EarlyMuse (COST action 21161) : report of WG5 policies (Barcelona, 2023)

Abstract

The Working Group for Policies (WG5) met for two days of discussions, hosted by the Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades, Barcelona, 13th-14th February 2023. The aim of this initial meeting was to begin a process of data collection and analysis regarding European cultural policy. Participants in the meetings covered a broad spectrum of fields, including musicology, performance practice, creative industries, policy, museum curation and data/archival work. Policy plays a fundamental, often underestimated, role in defining the presence and significance of early music studies in the wider culture. Whether on a Europe-wide, national or local scale, cultural and cultural heritage policy has the potential to give a much more prominent role to early music in the wider European culture and in public discourse than it currently has. And yet early music scholars and practitioners have only a partial or fragmentary understanding of cultural policy in Europe and the ways in which it impacts on musicology and its broader manifestations. Conversely, the expertise of early music researchers and practitioners is all too often ignored by policymakers, funding bodies and other cultural administrators. The WG5 meeting took the form of open-ended discussions involving stakeholders in a variety of fields and with different areas of knowledge and experience. The discussions centred on the current dynamics of European cultural policy and how the phenomenon of early music, including performance and musicological scholarship in its broadest sense, might be located within it.