Does our university offer enough space for encounters?

The question has been discussed time and again in recent years: Does our university need a central meeting space due to the physical separation of its buildings, such as other music universities have in the form of an in-house canteen? For a hot lunch, students, teaching staff and administrative staff have to make their way into the city center or bring their own food. Although there are already meeting places in the cafeterias, there is no central place where all students and teaching and administrative staff at the university can come together. The Senate has set up a 'Meeting Space' working group, which has been tasked with gathering feedback from the university community and exploring possible implementation options. As a first step, the working group conducted a survey among all university members in the summer semester of 2022. The results were published within the university at the beginning of the winter semester 2023/24 and were the main reason for the "University Café" event, which took place on 28.11.2023 as part of the "Diversity Days" project.

Working group members: Sonja Gruner (until 31.12.2023), Prof. Nimrod Guez, Daniela Hasenhündl, Florian Öttl, Markus Sotirianos and Prof. Dr. Christoph Wünsch

"Improvisation is too valuable to be left to chance."
Paul Simon

For many centuries, it was taken for granted that professional musicians also mastered the craft of improvisation and that improvisation was part of training and music-making. Nowadays, improvisation is usually only found in jazz, school and church music courses as well as elementary music education. Founded in the summer semester of 2022, the aim of the working group is to reintegrate improvisational practice and related offerings into the entire training and university.

The kick-off for this is a diverse series of workshops in the winter semester 2022/23, in which stylistically very different resident musicians - some guests, some members of the university - give an introduction to their respective improvisation practice. The workshops/sessions are aimed at students and lecturers from all disciplines.

The improvisation working group is made up of teachers from various specialist groups. Anyone interested is welcome to join and contribute their ideas and expertise!

Contact persons: Kurt Holzkämper and Prof. Tobias Usbeck

Following the discontinuation of the Netzwerk Musikhochschulen 2.0 training programme, a working group was formed at the University of Music Würzburg at the end of 2019 with the aim of advancing the development and organization of higher education didactic training courses at the university. Another focus is the development of support services for new lecturers as part of an "onboarding program."

The Teaching Development Working Group is made up of lecturers and the two QM staff units. The contact person is Prof. Tobias Usbeck.

The CareerCenter working group at the Würzburg University of Music is dedicated to the conception and implementation of a career centre at our university.

The aim is to support students in all aspects of "music, profession and career" and to promote their music careers through professionally relevant, non-artistic content. The Career Centre is intended to be a central point of contact for questions about career development and career entry through the bundled extracurricular offers.  

Please feel free to contact us as members of the working group with any questions or suggestions. Anyone interested is cordially invited to get involved!

Technical management: Clara Blessing
Coordination: Mateusz Phouthavong

Current WG members: Clara Blessing, Benedikt Haag, Michael Forster, Regina Götz, Sandra Kloiber, Mateusz Phouthavong