An international think tank of music educators will gather in downtown Windsor starting today for a conference examining the interactions between humans and technologies and how they contribute to the development or destruction of forms of musical knowledge and practice.

The MayDay Group aims to identify, critique, and change taken-for-granted patterns of professional activity, polemical approaches to method and philosophy, and educational politics and public pressures that threaten effective practice and critical communication in music education.

Its Colloquium 33, “Social Media for Good or Evil in Music Learning and Teaching,” will take place in the SoCA Armouries and Wildeman Centre for Creative Arts from June 8 to 11.

It was made possible by a $25,000 SSHRC Connection Grant submitted by principal applicant Janice Waldron, professor of music education; co-applicant Danielle Sirek, assistant professor of education at Western University; and Scott Cowan, information services librarian at the Leddy Library. Brent C. Talbot, associate professor and co-ordinator of music education at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College, rounds out the organizing committee.

“One of the reasons I was particularly motivated to host this is because our Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning came out during COVID,” says Dr. Waldron. “We were supposed to present at a big international symposium in Finland in 2020, and of course that hasn’t happened. So, we really wanted to use this conference, as it aligns with MayDay’s ideals.”

A full schedule of keynote speakers and presenters — called “provocateurs” — is available on the conference website.

“If you look at the abstracts, we are really pleased with who’s coming and our presenters,” Waldron says. “At this conference, the presentations are the conversation starters. Then the conversation moves among the attendees.”