International research

Presentation by Dinah Trotoux and Louison Barbaud-Haas

The mediation game is a project that Isabelle Ronzier has been working on for several years. As a trainer at the CFMI in the context of the module Action de sensibilisation au spectacle musical, the need for a training tool that could make the issues of mediation more concrete became apparent to her. From there came the idea of a board game. The first drafts were then initiated with the participation of different student classes.

Louison Barbaud-Haas and Dinah Trotoux, two 2nd year students at the CFMI of Aix-en-Provence, joined Isabelle in this project in 2021, with the objective of creating the game, in order to respond to a call for papers for the Rencontres internationales des médiations de la musique in Montreal in October 2022. To do this, they essentially relied on their experience of mediation and that of their fellow students, during an internship carried out in the framework of the CFMI in a cultural structure and during which they had to carry out a mediation action. As it is the result of a particular experience, the game is therefore far from having the ambition to describe all the realities that music mediation can cover. It is more a sharing of this experience, always with the objective of participating in training on the different issues of mediation.

The collaborative format chosen for this game highlights the need for close cooperation in order to build the mediation action. The four protagonists of the game, who are a mediator, a representative of a cultural structure, an artist and a representative of the public group, will each have missions to carry out, sometimes together, in order to reach the key moments that are the mediation session and then the performance. The game highlights the importance of each person's work, and the need to coordinate. It emphasizes the organizational tasks as well as the artistic creation work that the mediation project covers. However, chance will also bring favourable or unfavourable circumstances to the game...

This game is aimed at CFMI students, but also at anyone interested in the construction of a musical mediation action (audience coordinator, theater manager, educational manager, teacher, artist...) and who wants to understand the roles of each actor in the construction process of such an action. Although it does not have universal value, this game can be adapted to the specific forms encountered in a particular context and thus suit the realities of each field.

Description of the research project

This project is conducted 2018-2019 at the Centre de formation des musiciens intervenants, CFMI, of Aix-Marseille- Université́, as part of a training module on the practice of music mediation in connection

with cultural structures. The cultural structures are identified by their musical offer and by their commitment to the issue of mediation with all types of audiences.

The collaborative game was initiated to respond to a specific problem at the CFMI: students with very diverse professional backgrounds and multiple experiences, and therefore with very different perspectives on the issue of music mediation. Rather than a didactic course based on a common culture, the setting in situation by a collective research in which each one brings his competence made it possible to put the students in situation to experiment as in a role play. The questioning and the search for solutions were born from the situation. By asking the students to identify and represent the territory of the mediation action, to list the actors, the stakes, the obstacles, the solutions, starting from the point of view of the mediator (in this case the musician intervening in a school environment), the research and

collective research and creation processes were implemented, which were concretized in filmed improvisations. The sharing of these test videos challenged́ the EPMM, which solicited́ the CFMI to go further in the experiment and design a collaborative game that could participate in the training

of music mediators.

One of the challenges of the research is to transpose the CFMI experience, dedicated by nature to the intervention and musical mediation with a school audience, to any type of audience and mediation context. It is therefore a question of identifying the constants and variables of musical mediation. This requires from the students

students associated with the research to project themselves into the question of mediation beyond̀ the specific field of

specific competence for which they are trained. This positions the intervening musician in his or her role as a mediator of music, from the artistic, cultural, social, pedagogical and political point of view, which corresponds to an evolution of the profession, as defined in the latest reference frame of competences of the intervening musician. These questions about the posture of music mediator are the subject of the "Awareness-raising actions" module in which this research is included: a practice of mediation through creation, nourished by an active musical analysis of the repertoires which is concretized in a partnership device between the various actors of mediation.

Involvement of students

Two students have been associated to the research, to conceptualize the game based on the experimentations carried out in 2020 and 2021, on their skills, their intuitions, their questionings and the experimentation of the awareness-raising action they carried out in 2022. Isabelle Ronzier, as a trainer and field researcher associated with EPMM, accompanied the students in their reflections on the challenges of the mediation game and in its design by sharing with them her reflections, her experiences, her intuitions, in a shared research posture.

Immersion design sessions were organized in April and June 2022

The game was tested in situ: in June with the 2nd year students who had themselves followed the Awareness Action module, in September 2022 with the new 2nd year students, before they followed the module, in October 2022 with the EPMM students by video before the simulation during the RIMM

The training game aroused a certain interest when it was presented, with invitations to come and try it out with mediation students: CFMI of Sélestat, CNSM of Lyon

One of the mediators at the Opéra de Montréal expressed his enthusiasm for transposing it to his own professional practice, as a tool to answer his questions about "how to transmit the challenges of musical mediation through play".

The edition presented in Montreal was a prototype for experimentation. Several axes of deployment are to be implemented:

• Continue to experiment with the game in order to deepen its dynamics and dramaturgy in the service of mediation thinking
• Use the logbook to collect thoughts and processes of mediation
• Produce articles on the conception and experimentation of the game to testify to the research-action implemented
• Publish and disseminate the game, as a training tool and as a concept of musical mediation through creation in live performance.

Tracks:

• Editorial partnership between the EPMM of Montreal and the CFMI Council
• Call for projects from the EPMM of Montreal for part of the financing: collaboration between a computer graphics department of Aix-Marseille-University and the University of Montreal
• Search for funding to allow Dinah Trotoux and Louison Barbaud to continue and finalize their design work
• Search for funding to disseminate and promote the game in the field of training and in the field of cultural action

Could Momeludies be a publishing and distribution medium, given its role in the creation of repertoires by CFMIs and musicians?