Was happy to give the keynote talk at the Music Mark HE Conference at Cardiff University earlier in the month. Here is the abstract:

Making (It) Work: Reflections on Collaboration and Community

Over my post-PhD career working in academia, collaboration has become intrinsic to my practice as a composer, through projects that engage with artforms including poetry, puppetry, dance and film, as well as interdisciplinary work with researchers from virology, generative AI, sociology, games design and hearing science. This work has led me to be increasingly curious about how I can use my practice-research expertise to engage audiences with musical concepts, extra-musical phenomena and political ideas. Furthermore, working with a range of communities, musicians and artistic-practitioners has inspired me to reflect on my positionality and try to ensure I work in a non-extractivist and equitable way with both (freelance) collaborators and (research) project participants.

In this talk I will reflect on some of my experiences as a composer making work within, and outside, the academy. I will focus in particular on the development of my ongoing project ‘Pythagoras’ Toolkit’, which began in 2019 with a Canadian Arts Council funded commission from Montreal ensemble Paramirabo for a 45-minute puppetry-music piece for children and families (Warr & Oliver, 2023), and has led to a range of education interventions including our recently released digital resource Pythagoras’ Workshops Toolkit (Oliver, Warr & Lam, 2025). Drawing on approaches to equitable (and ethical) collaboration, I will consider how researchers in music studies might work towards meaningful creative public engagement and impact.