The following article is republished with the kind permission of Uniarts Helsinki. The original article is available at Uniarts Helsinki website.

When the first AIRE event of the IN.TUNE alliance took place in Vienna in November 2025, Professor Juha Ojala from the Sibelius Academy – Uniarts Helsinki followed proceedings with both enthusiasm and a keen critical eye.

Teachers, supervisors and students across the IN.TUNE alliance are warmly invited to contribute to AIRE 2026 – the second Annual IN.TUNE Research in Education Event, which will focus on research education and supervision in master’s and doctoral programmes.

The deadline for submissions is 19 January 2026.

Organised by Uniarts Helsinki within IN.TUNE’s Work Package 4, Strengthening our Research Dimension, AIRE 2026 will take place just before EPARM 2026 (European Platform for Artistic Research in Music), led by IN.TUNE’s associated partner, the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC).

By René Wynants, IN.TUNE Student Council member and student representative in the Committee of Work Package 4 Strengthening Our Research Dimension

On 3–4 November, the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna hosted the first edition of AIRE – Annual IN.TUNE Research in Education Event: a two-day conference bringing together researchers, teachers and students from the eight partner institutions of the IN.TUNE European Alliance.

The gathering marked an important milestone in the alliance’s growing collaboration around music research and its resonance in educational practices across IN.TUNE universities, and introduced a new shared infrastructure – the IN.TUNE Knowledge Hub.

The first Annual IN.TUNE Research in Education Event (AIRE) brought teachers, students, and researchers from all partner institutions together at University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (mdw) — and online — to explore the many ways artistic practice, research, and teaching intersect in higher music and arts education. Across topics ranging from research-led teaching and interdisciplinary practice to challenging canons, community engagement, and field-based learning, participants shared diverse perspectives and experiences. The event highlighted the richness of approaches within the alliance and the value of dialogue in shaping future educational practices.
In the reflections below, two participants from Uniarts Helsinki share their impressions and insights from the event.

How do we build lasting trust in artistic standards across institutions? This interview follows three teachers from Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki, who served as external examiners at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague in Spring 2025, encountering new evaluation cultures, bold programming and truly holistic final concerts. Their reflections speak directly to IN.TUNE’s ambition to pilot an intra-university exchange of external examiners: inviting partners to take part in one another’s formal assessment processes as a foundation for closer, long-term cooperation in internal and external quality assurance. The goal is mutual, continuous trust in educational quality — while enabling teachers to learn from diverse assessment approaches and informing whether admissions and examinations could be better coordinated across the alliance. Read the full interview to see what this looks like in practice and why it matters for our next steps.