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.

At the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw), IN.TUNE is moving from planning to practice — and mdw’s Institutional Alliance Manager offers a front-row view of what this new phase means for teachers, staff, students and partners. From 66 proposals, 16 joint teaching pilots will now roll out across 2025–27 in formats ranging from online courses to blended intensive programmes and longer joint modules, with mdw engaged in ten. Alongside fresh offerings — from socially engaged musicking to immersive sound and creative communication—two joint degree pathways are in development: a modular “Music Master” concept and a renewed, more flexible ECMAster. This concise insight from Veronika Leiner (mdw) shows how ideas are becoming concrete opportunities and how we’re building towards coordinated, sustainable provision across the alliance. 

Since January 2024, the IN.TUNE programme has brought together eight European partners to promote the development of music and arts education across Europe. Beyond collaboration in knowledge and expertise, such alliances carry a strong political vision aimed at strengthening solidarity among countries while promoting democratic values, academic freedom, and cultural diversity. The goal is to build a Europe open to the world, capable of addressing current social, economic, and environmental challenges. Within this framework, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris has decided to spotlight one of the universities in this alliance each season. The first stop on this European journey: Serbia. Journalist, Balkan specialist, and correspondent for numerous French-speaking media outlets, Louis Seiller travelled in early May to meet the students and professors of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade.

This July, the Barcelona Arts Summer School (BASS) welcomed 150 emerging artists from nearly 30 countries to the heart of Catalonia for two weeks of creative experimentation, collaboration, and chaos. Hosted in iconic venues like Montjuïc Castle and Barcelona’s Design Hub, BASS brought together interdisciplinary teams to tackle social issues through performance, technology, and art.

Fifty students from six IN.TUNE partner universities took part, using this vibrant artistic lab not just to push their personal boundaries, but to contribute to a broader conversation: how interdisciplinary artistic pedagogy can fuel curricular innovation in the alliance and across Europe’s arts institutions. For IN.TUNE, BASS wasn’t just a summer school — it was a living prototype of the alliance’s evolving vision. Have a look at the impressions from our students.