What would change if musicians’ health were treated not as an individual responsibility, but as a core responsibility of music institutions? This talk introduces a new international Position Paper developed through a two-year consensus process involving 122 contributors from 31 countries and six continents. Bringing together perspectives from music education, performance science, psychology, medicine, public health, disability studies, law, student communities, unions, and institutional leadership, the project asked what meaningful health promotion in tertiary music education should actually require.
The resulting seven recommendations call for change across institutional culture, governance, leadership, curriculum, teaching, and student participation. Rather than focusing only on helping musicians cope better with existing pressures, they ask how the environments in which musicians learn and develop might themselves be redesigned to support health. The session will explore what these recommendations could mean in practice, where responsibility for change lies, and what a genuinely health-informed music institution might look like.
Dr Raluca Matei is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society whose work over the past decade has focused on musicians’ health and wellbeing. Originally trained as a professional violinist, she studied at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland under Maxim Vengerov before pursuing a career in psychology, health promotion, and research. Raluca Matei holds a PhD focused on musicians’ health and recently completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Performing Arts and Health at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. She is currently a Researcher in Health and Wellbeing at The King’s Foundation in the UK, where her work includes the development of a new Centre for Health and Wellbeing
