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The idea is that by combining the resources and
specialisms of more than one institution, it is
What is ConductIT? possible to do work that wouldn’t be possible
independently. The minimum requirement is three
by Mark Heron separate institutions from three different Erasmus
countries. After a near miss with our first attempt,
ConductIT is an Erasmus-funded research project in August 2018 we were awarded €400,000 for
which aims to develop innovative ways of teaching a 3-year project with the University of Aveiro in
conducting using online resources. Portugal joining the RNCM, Stavanger and the OU.

How did it come about? What was the need we identified?

When you say “Erasmus” most people think of The starting point was a question of materials to
students doing an exchange, sometimes one support teaching and learning. There’s plenty of good
semester or a whole year, in Universities or stuff, in traditional form and online, that deals with
Colleges in other European countries. There are also the theoretical and analysis skills that conductors
staff exchanges, which tend to involve two teachers need. There are many insightful and entertaining
in different institutions swapping places for a shorter biographies and documentaries dealing with famous
period. I might host a colleague from Weimar in conductors. The internet is full of videos of conductors
Germany who comes and teaches my students in concert, and to a lesser extent in rehearsal.
for a week, and next term I’ll return the favour. The What doesn’t yet exist is something reasonably
Erasmus scheme pays for the travel and comprehensive and structured that moves on from
accommodation, and we learn from each other’s the fact that a textbook about conducting technique
approach to teaching. is fundamentally unsatisfactory. All those diagrams
of beat patterns with swooshy curvy lines going in all
I’d been doing this for a couple of years with the directions have just never really done it for me….
University of Stavanger in Norway, where in addition
to the more usual full time degree for wannabe-
professional-conductors, for the last 10 years or so
they have been developing courses aimed at the
many wind & brass band conductors working in the
amateur and education sectors. Due to Norway’s
expansive geography, they decided to do this using
technology as well as more traditional forms of
teaching. This (as many more of us have learned
during the last six months) is what is known as
‘blended learning’. Over the course of a year, the
students would have three practical blocks of work
in Stavanger: a week just before the start of the
academic year, and two further long weekends
in winter and spring. In between they would have
various online assignments to carry out, plus 1-1
lessons with their tutor using some fancy and
expensive video conferencing software. Now we have
Zoom for that! I had also been involved with the Open
University in the production of a MOOC’ - Massive
Open Online Course - which amongst other things
dealt with the basics of what a conductor does.

Fast forward a couple of years and Morten Wensberg
from Stavanger and Naomi Barker from the OU were
at a conference about innovation in online music
education and realised they both knew me. A few
conversations later we decided to apply for funding
from another strand of Erasmus, the catchily titled
“Strategic Partnerships in the field of education,
training and youth”.
Mark Heron

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