inaugural lecture ‘Pluriversity & Music-Making’ – Faculty Law, Antwerp University

Xenophobia, racism and antisemitism are for sure realities we come across in most of our societies, but so does a growing understanding that a diversified composition of society can guarantee its richness and strength. Participatory social music projects represent a field of social practice which is rapidly developing in many countries and which often adopts this perspective by welcoming and embracing a diversity of participants, coming from very different economic, social and cultural backgrounds.

Lukas Pairon founded the international research platform SIMM (on Social Impacts of Music-Making) which since 2017 helps to develop research on social music programmes in order to better understand what the role of music-making can be in social work. He is himself especially active in Gaza (Palestine) and in Kinshasa (DR Congo). He will illustrate how music-making and social music projects can welcome diversity by presenting cases in these two regions.