ABSTRACT
Benevolence and equity have historically been among the founding values of the European music school system. The earliest forms of music schools (Conservatorio) in 16th-century Italy offered orphan children shelter, food, and music tuition while conserving the musical components of the church and sacred education (Kuha, 2017). Today, most European music schools are under governmental subsidy and regulation and organise music instrument tuition for those who apply as a supplement for basic music tuition given in comprehensive schools. The established position allows for advocacy and continuity of wide, cross-nation music school networks that state their mission objective as strengthening opportunities for qualified music training, 1 which, to some extent, seems to overshadow broader equity values. For example, in the Nordic countries where equality and access are general values of all education, music schools have been identified as elitist (Jordhus-Lier, Graabræk Nielsen and Karlsen, 2021; Väkevä, Westerlund and Ilmola-Sheppard, 2017; Väkevä, Westerlund and Ilmola-Sheppard, 2022) as they concentrate primarily on Western classical music and serve mainly white, middle-class children, thus reproducing inequalities (e.g. Galmiche et al., 2024; Ilmola-Sheppard et al., 2021; Westerlund et al., 2021). This criticism relates to unequal educational opportunities recognised on the governmental level (e.g. EU Youth Strategy, 2018), creating pressure also for music schools to improve and update their practices, access strategies and policies. Consequently, Nordic music school research has recently focused on diversity and inclusion policies (e.g. Rønningen et al., 2019, 2023) and expanding discussions from producing adequate musicians for the professional fields (e.g. Kuha, 2017) to reflecting on the social responsibilities of music schools (Laes et al., 2021; Westerlund, Väkevä and Ilmola-Sheppard, 2019).
