Page 165 - AC-3-3

Arts & Communication Push the ENVELOPE

attention to musical detail through morning lectures and sonic arts, contemporary music and art, and activities
evening “Guest Sharings” sessions with experienced artists and exercises that can be adapted for school curriculum.
and establish listening habits as a creative practice through Thus, the Teacher Retreat was a vital part of our strategy to
listening exercises by demonstrating existing works introduce the program’s activities to education institutions.
adopting such approaches (Figure 1). In 2023, the one-day workshop was attended by 12

One of the challenges in the process of developing Push educators. In the feedback response questionnaire, the
the ENVELOPE is the limited resources on pedagogy for participating teachers have indicated activities involving
sonic arts and local references. Thus, the Artist Teachers audio equipment might be difficult to execute in schools.
came together to develop the course content from their However, they found the approach with DIY instrument
own learning experience in the local music and art building and music compositional exercises would be
institution and personal practice. For instance, Shuen easier to include into their existing curriculum because it
sought to bridge listening experiences between Hong requires less sophisticated skills and technical resources.
Kong pop music and Lachenmann; Kan discussed the The Pre-course was designed to provide a glimpse of the
local soundscape with his map of field recordings allocated topics that would then be covered in the following Camp.
around the entire city including its large green areas; and It would also allow the leaders to know the participants
Lam demonstrated hardware hacking with locally sourced before entering the campsite. There was a total of 8 h of
toys and parts. These examples of practices that are locally activity time in the Pre-course, separated into two days
anchored made the participants aware of the importance of 4 h each, usually a week apart. The participants had to
of paying close attention to the “individual history” of attend all 8 h of activities to qualify for the Camp.
objects and places. Through this act of paying attention,
everyday items are imbued with value; we might call this 3.4. Creating a safe space for creativity
“upcycling” of discarded materials, extending their lifespan One of our Artist Teachers, Lawrence Lau, suggested
and usefulness, or even the dream of artists, an alchemist that instead of starting by defining what sound art is, the
process of making musical gold out of sonic lead. pedagogy should start with the question: “What can sound

Push the ENVELOPE takes references from the first art be?” In the context of contemporary Hong Kong, sound
camp organized by CMHK in 2017 – 2018, Sound Brood, art is understood as a multi-disciplinary practice, and such
for its structure and influence among in-school educators practice may not necessarily exclude other disciplines.
through the distribution of the publication, “Sound Brood: A similar approach is used based on the discussion of Paulo
An Interdisciplinary Approach in Sound, Music and Art.” Freire’s idea on the dialogical approach to UbiMus from
10
The professional development workshop for in-school Pedagogy of Hope (1999) by Lima et al., which blurs the
educators, the Teacher Retreat, was a version of the Pre- teacher-student boundary by encouraging the participants
course that includes the theories of the correlation between to “become producers of knowledge rather than passive

Figure 1. Schedule of the Camp. Copyright © 2023 Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong. Reprinted with permission of Contemporary Musiking Hong
Kong.

Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 4 doi: 10.36922/ac.6236