MERC

National Centre for Research in Music Education and Sound Arts

About MERC

The National Centre for Research in Music Education and Sound Arts (MERC)

serves as the national hub for the coordination of and contribution to research in music education and sound arts. Through its activities the Centre will increase understanding and knowledge of the musical arts in education and in the wider community. MERC is devoted to developing the national and international profile of music education in Aotearoa New Zealand through its activities, partnerships and collaborations.

Recognised partnerships

AHA – Arts Hub Aotearoa is New Zealand’s UNESCO Asia Pacific Arts Education Observatory serving as MERC’s international conduit.
UNESCO Asia-Pacific Culture.
MENZA – Music Education New Zealand Aotearoa - the national subject association for music education and a key partner organisation to MERC.
METANZ – Music Education Trust Aotearoa New Zealand - a national trust dealing with advocacy and issues relating to music education.

These organisations and other key stakeholders are forming partnerships and collaborations with MERC and AHA to support music education.

Background to the title and MERC’s interests

Music Education

Music education encompasses specific discipline literacies including symbolic learning, technical skill acquisition, audiation, psychology, aesthetics, acoustics, music history, technology, performance and composition. As inherently co-constructive, music education helps learners to realise socio-cultural forms of expression and to communicate personal emotions and understandings of the world through music.

Sound Arts

Sound Arts encompass artistic practices in the communities of musical arts, embracing heritage and creativity. Whilst encompassing the performative and creative aspects of music they refer to the arts domain in a holistic sense and could include movement and dance, visual and technological aspects of CD, DVD and film. They are the essence of musics and their cultural contexts expressed as sound works of art.

Music and Sound Arts are sciences, and technological forms of communication.

Technologies, including digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), are integral aspects of musical sound production processes and increasingly of arts knowledge bases. Learning in, through and about music and sound arts now offers, in the 21st century, highly creative and challenging areas of exploration and research that encompass all nations’ musics (past, present, and possible future), technologies, scientific knowledge leading to new cultural understandings and meaning-making. Creative and social enterprises rely heavily on musical arts practices and understandings. Research in these areas within Aotearoa New Zealand can support development and understanding of personal and group expressive arts, reflecting identity and giving global recognition to our successes.

What does MERC do?

The overall aim of MERC is to provide a national focus for music education research at tertiary level. MERC serves to:

  • be recognised as the hub of networks for music educators involved in research in New Zealand
  • facilitate and establish networks between researchers, groups and institutions
  • act as a home for current and recently completed research and data collection in New Zealand and be a place where new initiatives can be planned and logged
  • help institutions and individuals identify and refine research projects
  • feed information to relevant music education bodies and make results available as widely as possible
  • gather research information and data from overseas relevant to the situation in this country
  • share information online for national and international audiences.

Research Projects Template

  • Arts Hub Aotearoa (AHA) – UNESCO/UC Asia Pacific Arts Education Observatory
  • MENZA – Music Education New Zealand Aotearoa, the national subject association for music education
  • METANZ - Music Education Trust Aotearoa New Zealand, a national trust dealing with advocacy and issues relating to music education.

MERC has built up a list of suggested and/or potential activities. This currently stands at more than twenty-five possible topics. The Directors periodically review the priorities of these with regard to need and financing. Some topics are of a kind that would suit student post-graduate study. Others would suit national, regional, or institutional collaborations.

Downloadable Completed and Potential Activities document
Research Projects Template (DOC, 114 KB), or (PDF, 34 KB)