Research Challenges – 21st Century Music Practice

The 21^st Century Music Practice research network is organising a series of practice-based ‘Research Challenges’ in which participants are invited to address research problems or questions through a practical challenge that is filmed and documented. Each Challenge will involve multiple researchers working together in teams on the same problem and multiple teams working on related problems. The aim is to generate shareable and useful new knowledge about practical problems through a collaborative and experimental research process. At the end of the challenge the researchers discuss the issues that arise and the documented process becomes an online publication/resource for others to use and learn from.

Each Challenge should involve the following:

A clear statement of the challenge / problem they are trying to solve / question they are trying to answer and what they expect practice research can contribute to it.
Documentation of the experiments / practice and discussion that was undertaken. This can (should?) be edited and if anything important is missing, it should be explained or re-enacted.
Discussion by the participants to discuss the contextual and practical new knowledge that they have gained through the process.
The Research Challenge should involve multiple researchers and can involve multiple ‘teams’ working in parallel so that the discussion involves multiple and varied perspectives and can therefore be considered peer review.

The Research Challenges can be organised and hosted at a specific higher education or research institution, in any suitable facility by a group of individuals, a scholarly or professional organisation / conference, or in a virtual form online. C21MP will work in a collaborative capacity to help organise the events and will host the outputs (and any post-event online discussion) on the website.

The first of these ‘Research Challenges’ will take place at the University of West London’s Townshend Studio – Pete Townshend’s unique collection of synthesisers and electronic musical instruments on loan to UWL.

Come and spend a day and a half exploring this unique collection of instruments by working in a small group (up to 4 people) to address a particular research challenge. Your practice in the studio will be live-streamed on social media.
We will invite participants to retrospectively edit the video to create a narrative that illuminates the research challenge and which will be published retrospectively.
We have suggested two research challenges (see below) but you can also suggest your own – either as an individual or as a group.
For the first day and a half of the ‘Research Challenge’ event (16^th– 17^th Oct 2025), participants will have access to the entire collection (subject to any maintenance issues) – although obviously we will need to organise a timetable of shared usage.
On the second afternoon, engage in a ‘post-challenge’ public date which will form part of a unique Practice Research output combining peer discussion and review with documentation and analysis of the practical work.

Participants will have to commit to being present for both days of the event.

Feel free to propose more specific challenges relating to the overall theme of “21^st Century Approaches to 20^th Century Electronic Musical Instruments”* or register your interest in one of the following two challenges:

Developing an effective approach to pedagogy for non-musicians and beginners using complex instruments and an inclusive range of musical styles and traditions.
Developing a 21^st century approach to musical creativity based on Roy Ascott’s Groundcourse and the way his ideas about cybernetics and feedback loops can be used with these instruments.

Send your proposals to simon.zagorski-thomas@uwl.ac.uk before 9 a.m. (UK time) on Monday 1^st September 2025 stating which of the challenges you are interested in (you can select more than one but will only participate in one) or proposing your own. If proposing your own challenge, you can either recruit other group members and make a group proposal or send your idea earlier than the deadline and we can forward it to these mailing lists so that others can volunteer to join you.

We will aim to invite successful applicants by mid-September so that groups can engage in some pre-production planning via email, Teams or Zoom and hit the ground running on the first day of the challenge. There will be technical assistance available for those that need guidance with the instruments.

* A few of the instruments are 21^st Century re-makes or re-interpretations of 20^th century originals. See the Townshend Studio website for details.