Author: Bart van Rosmalen
Organisation: Royal Conservatoire the Hague, Walter Maas Huis
Presentation 17-2-2006 conference ‘the reflective conservatoire’ London

Introduction
The Royal Conservatoire collaborates with the Walter Maas Huis developing a method for connecting conversation. This paper recalls shortly the history of the Walter Maas Huis. On this basis are expressed some thoughts about stimulating a connecting conversation between arts and society. Three concrete methodic examples follow almost as recipes to develop specific dialogues. A closing coda reflects on ‘the element of play’ as a possible connector, a shared vocabulary, between arts and society.

The Walter Maas Huis
The element of play in the history of an impressive house.
1924. The Dutch composer Julius Rontgen retires as rector of the conservatoire of Amsterdam. His 19 year old son designs a family-music- house with remarkable architecture with possibilities for small concerts, inviting international friends (Pablo Casals and so on). The house was called Gaudeamus.
1940 The German Jew Walter Maas had to move with his family from the Hague where he lived. War was starting. Cycling down Holland he found the house for rent at that time and moved in. He came safe out of the war and wanted to do something back for all the support he got. He started (without a musical background) organizing concerts and inviting composers to rebuilt culture after the war. Gaudeamus became an internationally known meeting point for the avant-garde, a place of inspiration. Maas gave an enormous impulse to the revolutionary generation Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Reinbert de Leeuw and so on. This generation, rather politically engaged with the protest- generation in the sixties, was leading for 30 years in developing a specific profile of Dutch Music.
1991 I came in contact with Walter Maas. Following a suggestion by Frans de Ruiter rector of the Royal Conservatoire, I developed a plan to use the house as a meeting point to reflect, discuss and innovate the relation arts and society. The reason to do so was the increasingly felt pressure on professionals working in music and the arts.
With a background of a cello player and composer of small scale music-theatre I now work as a consultant, trainer, moderator trying to ‘bridge’ were I can between arts, art institutions, artists and society, new needs, new demands.
2004- 2005 The concept of ‘connecting conversation’ was developed in close collaboration with Nico and the Royal Conservatoire. This project contributed largely to create fertile ground in the institute for quite fundamental changes in the curriculum starting September 2006 running the coming years.

Why a connecting conversation is needed.
What can be a shared vocabulary? The position of professional music is not at all safe. This insecurity with new demands and needs in the profile of future musicians puts educating professionals under pressure. Musicians however do not have the language to be a strong counterpart in discussions with society. Their language about playing, about music is easily overruled or ignored in the larger debate about political tension, sharp confrontations between cultures and the priority given to economic values. So the languages of musicians and the larger arena of life doesn’t automatically connect.
Aware of that gap, realizing the problem of being disconnected, the question is what to do?
My proposal is to develop a conversation that does connect along two lines:
1- learning better to deal with language of society. We’ll give concrete examples later.
2- rephrasing things we’re doing without losing the content.
This aspect triggers me momentarily immensely while a came across the text of a famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. Just before world war II Huizinga wrote a book called ‘homo ludens’ an analysis of the element of play in culture. His analysis states that one basic and irreplaceable aspect of the human nature is ‘play’. He uses it of course in the broader sense, so sport, chess and drama are included. He examens closely all the aspects of play. Personally I feel a permanent recognition. It seems if I’m reading about music, identifying myself, without one specialized word about music!
And there I see a possible change for a connecting conversation with society. Could this ‘element of play’ be a shared vocabulary?
For me a field of research coming years. On my first google on homo ludens I hit our minister of economic affairs quoting Huizinga and promoting Homo Ludens as a counterpart for an over dominating Homo Economicus. That’s hopeful.

Three concrete methodic aspects of organising conversation

1- Dramatic act to stimulate ownership of an interesting text
Sitting in a room with 10 to 20 music teachers. You want to have them in a conversation about changing education.  This is one of my approaches I’d like to share. Take the book with 24 interesting articles. They deal with changing education related to changing society. Hold the book in your left hand a little bit uplifted. Tell in inspiring lines what are the contents and why it is important for you. When you speak, just wave a little bit back and forth with the book to give it utmost importance. Than introduce the idea that the book is not an end (everything written down- mission accomplished), no, the book is a beginning, a starting point for connecting conversation. This hopeful view however, is immediately disturbed by facing reality. We all know, you say,  we are very busy, so its likely that you don’t read the book. We all agree it is important but we don’t read it. With some exaggeration, you say, I passed the wall with postboxes for the teachers five months after the book was published. Half of the boxes had the book still lying there, waiting to be picked up. That kind of stories you tell to illustrate the inevitable tragic fate of the book, being there, hidden, closed, as if containing secrets not to be spread. At this moment of crisis in your introduction you shout with passion, no, this must not happen with this book. Let’s really share the book. Than you open it and start taking the pages out and give them to the listeners. This is for you, here you are, this is yours. Let us each read one article and start our conversation telling the others why specific this article is important according to your opinion or deserves critical comments. Say them to stay closely by the text and relate their introduction to a specific quotation. See you next week or when it is a conference, see you back after one hour.
This “dramatic act to stimulate ownership of an interesting text’, is really effective to break open the regular discussion that we all know too well and don’t want any longer.

2- let the participants surprise themselves knowing more than they  think. 
Sitting in a room with 10 to 20 musicians, music-teachers. You want to discuss changing society. And you have only two hours for that item. What to do? Start with a short and very quick round. Ask each participant to think about three words that could express the answer on ‘why do you do what you do’? It’s asking for their credo, the inner urge, the inner conviction. After two minutes they just say the three words person after person. No comments, no interpretation just words connected with peoples beliefs. Leave some quite moments in between and at the end. You’ll feel what I mean.
Than comes a sudden turn to reality. Show the flap-over. In a long row, with space to write in between, you’ve written ten words, without a specific order, that deal with society like: economy, safety, education, sport, nature, welfare, media, culture, politics, work, ..
If you are with 15 people, ask each of them to choose two items to address with a personal opinion. The order of choosing is free, they just shout ‘sport, nature’ or ‘education, safety’. Maximum for each word is three (15 participants 2 choices is 30 comments to divide over 10 words). The play is ‘be quick or you have a forced choice’. You set a cross each time a word is chosen. Three crosses make you shout ‘economy full’, ‘politics is full’, who is next?
When all crosses are set give them just a few minutes to think about the two remarks they want to make in relation to the chosen words.  Than ask them to start. The order is free, they may relate to each other and address the words as they wish. Your role is only asking a supplementary question and maybe some rephrasing now and than. Stay away from discussion.
What happens can be quite amazing. All together as a group the participants formulate an image of society nowadays often directly related to their role for themselves, the institution or the profession.
In all aspects is this really what you could call a connecting conversation, creative and revealing hidden potential from the participants .

3- conversation inside- outside.
Hi, this is the royal conservatoire speaking. I want to ask you a favor. We’re in the middle of rethinking our future role. We see and hear fabulous musicians on our school and on the other side we see a lot of things changing in society. Professional practice seems not to be guaranteed. Discuss this only in our own circle is not enough. We feel a sense of urgency broadening our conversation. We want to ask you to contribute to that process.
(sotto voce). On the other side a city planner (very good for public domain, how we live), a politician (expressing of course all the doubts there are for high culture), an economist (when you are lucky someone that turns all standard economic values), a media or new media specialist (always interesting to hear future coming nearer) a this or a that, the possibilities are endless. That’s just casting. 
Whe ask you while we have the impression that your thoughts about …(public domain, values, impact of culture, economy of meaning whatever suits the person on the other side of the line)
can be starting point for a dialogue. Hat do you say?
Guess what? They want to come, they accept a bottle of wine, they want to write a short reflection afterwards and so on. And why? Not only because of the rhetoric in the phone call. No because it matters.

Coda
Do sportsmen know better what they are doing than musicians? In sports the food, the training, the physical aspect and the attitude seem related more explicit to values than in music. Values like being a good and healthy sportsman. The team spirit. Being brave. Justice after all. All kind of virtues are directly addressed by the stories the sportsmen tell, the image in the media and the film industry. The ethics of sport seem to be further developed than the ethics of music. In my opinion young sportsmen seem to be aware of these values while training. Part of their motivation deals with this reaching for the ethical dimension, its an undividable part of their education. That’s why I suggest to promote ‘the element of play’ as an issue for connecting conversation, not only as a shared vocabulary arts- society but also as part of the conversation in the one to one relation between teacher and student. The element of play, seen as a fundamental value can enrich the repertoire of teaching. On the longer term this can help musicians to combine excellent playing with being an ambassador and role model as well.

Bart van Rosmalen 17-2-2006