Abstract

Educating musicians for healthy music making across the lifespan

Education for healthy music making often starts later than it should for musicians to establish good habits that will serve them throughout their lives as players and singers. Over the course of the past 15 years the Healthy Conservatoires network – a legacy of the Musical Impact project – has developed effective approaches to health education for music performance students in the UK. In this talk I will draw on evidence from a range of studies in the fields of music education and music psychology to reflect on healthy music making not only for conservatoire students but also for performers from the youngest learners to those entering the music profession and those who have enjoyed long careers and are now making the transition into retirement.

Jane Ginsborg is Professor Emerita of Music Psychology at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), Manchester, UK. Following a successful career as a professional singer she retrained as an academic psychologist and, having worked at the University of Manchester, Sheffield University, Leeds Beckett University, and the Open University, she joined the RNCM in 2005, where she was Associate Director of Research and Programme Leader for Research Degrees. President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) from 2012 to 2015, she was Editor-in-Chief of Musicae Scientiae from 2018 to 2025. She is Chair of the Psychosocial Working Group of the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine and member of the Help Musicians Research Advisory Board. Among many other publications she has co-authored a textbook, Performing Music Research: Methods in Music Education, Psychology, and Performance Science (Williamon et al., 2021) published by Oxford University Press, and she is currently co-editing the 3rd edition of the Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology.