Her Majesty Queen Máxima will be present on Thursday, September 4, at the official start of a national research project by More Music in the Classroom on cultural education in primary education in the Netherlands. The aim of the research is to gain a better understanding of how cultural education is implemented in practice. The meeting will take place at Leiden University of Applied Sciences. Queen Máxima is the honorary chair of More Music in the Classroom.
The research is conducted under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Edwin van Meerkerk, professor of cultural education at Radboud University. Various research groups in arts and music education, including Leiden University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, are collaborating on the research. The research maps how cultural education is organized, what the impact is on students, schools, and the broader society.
Queen Máxima will attend the speech by Prof. Heddy Lahmann, clinical professor of international education at New York University. Lahmann has mapped the status of arts education in schools worldwide. Subsequently, Van Meerkerk will translate this to the Dutch context and present the setup of the research trajectory. Queen Máxima will also attend two working sessions in which the research questions will be refined; the first focuses on international research on cultural education in other countries. The second working session is titled “Vision” and addresses the research questions at the school level as well as within institutions and municipalities.
The More Music in the Classroom foundation has been committed since 2015 to structural music education for all primary school children in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. In 2023, the foundations work was broadened to make a wide range of cultural offerings accessible to children and young people for whom this is not self-evident. The goal is to expand the world of the student and contribute to the cognitive, social, and creative development of children. The foundation aligns with the School and Environment program of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
RVD, no. 222