Mission
The McGill Performance Science Initiative aims to capture, understand, and inspire ways of thinking about performance, with direct implications for the arts, education, science, and wider society.
From our base in the Schulich School of Music and CIRMMT, we aim to:
- create new knowledge and challenge assumptions of existing performance practice,
- apply healthy strategies drawing parallels and highlighting differences between performance domains, from the arts to business to medicine and science.
Our research, teaching, and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange cluster around grand challenges in performance, including:
- Performance EDUCATION
- Performance HEALTH AND WELLBEING
- Performance SYSTEMS
Context
Current challenges
- High incidence of injuries and psychological issues among musicians
- Needs and concerns expressed by students
- Growing societal focus on wellbeing
Building on
- Multidisciplinary approaches to performance training in other fields
- Research into the optimization of physical and psychological performance skills
We propose
A multidisciplinary team who, through research, will develop strategies for the enhancement of performance skills and healthy learning, providing students with an optimized and tailored training environment
Why McGill
The performance science initiative aims to bring these multidisciplinary strengths together, building on existing research to discover and apply solutions for healthy practice in performance. |
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Approach
Challenge-led research
We aim to develop a portfolio of “challenge-led projects” in collaboration with industry, cultural, and health partners. We will work with partners to identify and address artistic, scientific and technological challenges. This mode of working is central to the long-term sustainability plan, with research and posts funded (partially) through such third-stream activities and the commercial exploitation of research.
Interdisciplinary performance science
Interdisciplinary teams around the performer includes practitioners, learners, researchers, pedagogues, technology developers, psychologists, kinesiologists, etc.
| Performance education |
The challenge The conditions under which people perform are very often different from those in which they learn. This stems, in part, from a gap in training: not only do performers require knowledge, but they need to be able to apply their knowledge to perform well. |
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| Performance health and wellbeing |
The challenge Performance is dynamic and brings many rewards, but there are also challenges, real and perceived, that may lead to patterns of negative thinking, avoidance behavior, and debilitating injury that have serious consequences for success and for health. |
| Performance systems |
The challenge Performances result from a vast interaction of decisions and behaviors, each altered by the qualities and interactions of those performing, as well as the environments and conditions under which performance occurs. Audiences and spectators often see only the surface of performance, not the innumerable factors and preparation underpinning it. Capturing and measuring such facets can yield considerable and sometimes surprising insight into fundamental processes of human cognition, behavior, and social interaction |
Convergence of grand challenges: impact
Interdisciplinary performance science
Interdisciplinary teams around the performer includes practitioners, learners, researchers, pedagogues, technology developers, psychologists, kinesiologists, etc.
Sustainability
Sustaining critical mass
We aim to build capacity at all levels of seniority. Senior appointments in each thematic area will extend the capacity to bid for competitive research funds, feeding back into the pool of junior researchers and PhD students and into the underlying research infrastructure.
Challenge-led research and partnerships
The portfolio of ‘challenge-led projects’ done in collaboration with industry, cultural and health partners is central to the long-term sustainability plan, with research and posts funded (partially) through such third-stream activities and the commercial exploitation of research.
