The drive to learn and engage in music varies among individuals. Global motivation to do something can be intrinsic, for example, the joy and satisfaction in an activity. But motivation behind our action can also be extrinsic, such as the desire for fame, status or increased financial resources. The type of motivation probably influences to what degree individuals engage in musical activities. In this study, we examined the associations between the level of musical engagement and self-rated global motivation, factoring in age and sex, in a sample of 5,435 individuals. Musical engagement ranged from no music activity to amateurs and professional musicians. We found that intrinsic motivation increases with level of music activity and that motivation differs depending on sex, with females scoring higher on intrinsic motivation than males. Such differences may be considered in adjusting the forms of support offered to young musicians in music education. The phenomenon of motivation is complex, and we have highlighted areas that require further investigation, but this study has elucidated some differences in motivation types found in men and women, and between non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians.

Engaging with the arts and creative activities can be beneficial for both mental and physical health. There is a lot of robust evidence about using arts to support mental health and well-being. 

Arts and Health are clearly interwoven as a red thread in this 10 step program - “learning by doing” - concept, in which the embodied knowledge from guided body experiences will lead to a more conscious awareness of health. 

According to research the arts can also support students coping with stress and anxiety.

Transition to sustainability is a process that requires change on all levels of society from the physical to the psychological. This article takes an interdisciplinary view of the landscapes of research that contribute to the development of pro-social behaviors that align with sustainability goals, or what we call ‘inner sustainability’. Engaging in musical and dance-activities can make people feel trust and connectedness, promote prosocial behavior within a group, and also lower prejudices in between groups. Sustained engagement in these art forms brings change in a matter of seconds (such as hormonal changes and associated stress relief), months (such as raised emotional well-being and learning outcomes), and decades (such as structural changes to the brain of musicians and dancers, superior skills in expressing and understanding emotion). In this review, we bridge the often-separate domains of the arts and sciences by presenting evidence that suggests music and dance promote self-awareness, learning, care for others and wellbeing at individual and group levels. In doing so, we argue that artistic practices have a key role to play in leading the transformations necessary for a sustainable society. We require a movement of action that provides dance and music within a constructive framework for stimulating social sustainability.

The way we perceive and make sense of the world is a process that involves the brain's cognitive functions and body’s sensory and motor functions as well. The term embodiment describes how cognition has its basis in the physical body. This builds on an understanding of the brain as constituted by: a) the sensory systems, which regulate perception of a current situation, b) the motor systems, which make action possible, and c) the introspective systems, which govern cognitive operations and conscious experiences of emotion. Today, the development of these intergrated systems are thought to be important for the cultivation of wellbeing and for leadership in work. The arts draw from all three systems and there is a growing interest in how different artistic activities i.e. music, dance and art, can enhance empathy and compassion in our societies. We examine the particular power of arts-based interventions to foster embodied skills, such as compassion, for the development of wellbeing and leadership capabilities. The needed social transformation into embodied compassion at work will require some cultural change.

The way we perceive and make sense of the world is a process that involves the brain's cognitive functions and body’s sensory and motor functions as well. The term embodiment describes how cognition has its basis in the physical body. This builds on an understanding of the brain as constituted by: a) the sensory systems, which regulate perception of a current situation, b) the motor systems, which make action possible, and c) the introspective systems, which govern cognitive operations and conscious experiences of emotion. Today, the development of these intergrated systems are thought to be important for the cultivation of wellbeing and for leadership in work. The arts draw from all three systems and there is a growing interest in how different artistic activities i.e. music, dance and art, can enhance empathy and compassion in our societies. We examine the particular power of arts-based interventions to foster embodied skills, such as compassion, for the development of wellbeing and leadership capabilities. The needed social transformation into embodied compassion at work will require some cultural change.

Out of our bodies means out of our minds. The way we perceive and make sense of the world is a function not only of our brain's cognitive function but also of our sensory and motor functions as well. The term embodiment is used to describe the ways in which cognition has its basis in the physical body, and the definition is built up from a theoretical focus according to Niedenthal et al (2005) on the brain´s modality-specific systems that are constituted by, first, the sensory systems, which regulates perception of a current situation, and second, the motor systems, which make action possible, and finally the introspective systems, which govern cognitive operations and conscious experiences of emotion. The Arts incorporate these three systems, and currently there is a growing interest in how different artistic activities i.e. music and dance can enhance empathy and compassion in working environments, where wellbeing and successful leadership can grow. From systematic reviews, we know that we need more specific organisational interventions targeting psychosocial factors building on psychosomatic theory and more likely, these interventions should be grounded in the physical body (embodied) and linked to compassion to be able to better protect emotional exhaustion. So, how could we develop compassion embodied skills in our work places, in a more practical manner, and where does the art come in?

Art, creation and health. What is health and how are we talking about heatlh in relation to creative processes? Can we read responses from arts in the body and in the body of our society? Art experiences can increase the ability to regulate emotions, influence stress, create security and flow, but what happens to social, emotional and aesthetic values ​​if art is lost? What society do we want to create? Embodied knowledge from different reseach reports will be the focus in this presentation. Reflections on pros and cons are an important part of how we backcast our future use of the arts.

Communication between people can easily be regarded as a piece of music. All ingredients are there; The pitch, the rythm,, the coordination of movement patterns, the energy, the interpretation of gestures and mimicry. Music therefore is (or should be) a part of all communication in the medical world, as part of the Medicine and part of academia.From our findings regarding the theem #metoo; "We don’t use the same vocabular of “body borders” when you are talking to a person outside the music- and dance world”. "As a dancer/musican you are trained to regulate and adapt your perception, compared to a non dancer or non musician”. “To be touched” can mean so many different things for different people”. "There are differences between physial and emotional sensations”. “We have different body memories that affect our perception totally different”. Using the strong artistic experience that the performance of a musical work provides, we explore a) how musicians and composers can express and communicate difficult feelings and b) how emotional expressions from music influence the audience after attending the concerts. Our "knowledge concert", dealing with charged and sensitive topic as #metoo, is evaluated and reflected on.

The objective of the project Quality of Life - Health and Culture is to strengthen Nordic-Russian cooperation and exchange of knowledge on culture in health care. Culture and health is a relatively new growing knowledge field in the Nordic countries and NW Russia. A healthy population has a positive influence on the countries’ competitiveness, growth and innovative capacity. The combination of culture and health cooperation contributes to increased sustainability within health care. The overall purpose is to enhance capacity of experts on health and culture in NW Russia and the Nordic countries by introducing Nordic and Russian experiences and knowledge of art and culture on health. The Fairy tale project is part of this Nordic Russian collaboration.

 Kulturaktiviteter kan påverka människors hälsa på olika sätt beroende på bakomliggande faktorer, såsom deras erfarenheter och genetik. Kulturen och konsten har ett naturligt sätt att transformera och integrera kunskap om både individkroppens och samhällskroppens hälsa. Kultur och konst har en icke-verbal kraft som går bakom ord och som därmed berör människor på en djupare känslomässig nivå än ord kan. Trots att kulturaktiviteter lätt kan distribueras och organiseras är de ännu inte en naturlig del av den integrerade vården. Människan är och tillhör ett system som är oskiljaktigt från sin kulturella kontext och därför kan kulturaktiviteter naturligt ”smitta av sig” på mänskliga system. Kultur kan länka personer till varandra genom processer av medkänsla, minska hierarkier och påverka minnesfunktioner och inlärning. Konst och kultur spelar därför en nyckelroll inom integrativ vård med dess olika kognitiva och känslomässiga triggerfunktioner för utvecklandet av känslonyansering och kognitiv flexibilitet.Detta kapitel lyfter kulturens och konstens transformerande effekter på mänskliga och vårdande system.

Kulturaktiviteter påverkar människor på olika sätt beroende av personens genetik, erfarenheter och personliga program. Detta kapitel tar upp aktiviteter som sång, dans, musicerande, måleri, teater, stillhetsövningar och naturupplevelser; aktiviteter som utvärderats i olika sammanhang på patienter, vårdgivare och studenter. Förutom att kulturaktiviteterna har en icke verbal kraft som går bakom ord så har de en viktig roll när det gäller bearbetning av stress och möjlighet att stärka hälsa. Trots att kulturaktiviteter är förhållandevis enkelt att distribuera inom vården så är de ännu inte en naturlig del av den. Människan är och tillhör ett system och är därmed oskiljaktig från den kulturella kontexten. Därför kan kulturaktiviteter smitta av sig på våra mänskliga system. Kulturaktiviteter kan länka personer till varandra genom medkänsloprocesser, minska hierarkier och påverka minnesfunktioner och livsenergier. Detta kapitel berör kulturens smittoeffekter på våra känslor och på våra medmänskliga hälsoprocesser.

Through a historical perspective, the overall aim with this study is to deepen the understanding of arts and aesthetics, in relation to health, for the benefi- cial use in higher education programs. Since prehistoric time, mankind has been using different art forms for health reasons. Artwork created by a society is a product of the culture that prevails within that society. Aesthetics is con- nected to art, and it spans over a wider field than just art. This literature re- view study brings different historical views on arts, aesthetics, and creativity. The human need for art, music and health is essentially the same through the ages. By bringing in a historical perspective on the healing powers of art and aesthetics we can be better equipped to reintroduce arts in higher education also as a healthy factor. We need to understand our history to be able to create an understanding of the healthy meaning of art for future higher edu- cation students. Lessons that have been used for millennia must not be lost.

"The objective of the project Quality of Life - Health and Culture is to strengthen Nordic-Russian cooperation and exchange of knowledge on culture in health care. Culture and health is a relatively new growing knowledge field in the Nordic countries and NW Russia. A healthy population has a positive influence on the countries’ competitiveness, growth and innovative capacity. The combination of culture and health cooperation contributes to increased sustainability within health care. The overall purpose is to enhance capacity of experts on health and culture in NW Russia and the Nordic countries by introducing Nordic and Russian experiences and knowledge of art and culture on health". 

 There is robust evidence that the arts can be used to support mental health and well-being, but there are few studies on how to use the arts to prepare students, through higher education, to lead sustainable and healthy working lives. Preparation is needed for better learning environments in terms of creativity and health in curricula for higher academic education. In order to build an educational platform for "art & health" that facilitates a sustainable future working life for students, information was collected from creative music students. Interviews were conducted to create an interview guide for five subsequent individual in-depth interviews. Phenomenological hermeneutic analyzes were made. "Educating Meaning Instead of Perfection—Building a Health-Arts-Sustainability (HeArtS) Platform" was the result of the full interpretation. Meaning is not created by doing things you are good at. Students want a curriculum where the focus is on challenges; skills that you are not good at and therefore need to be stimulated as well as better collective self-awareness and body awareness training and sharing. Systematized arts intervention programs practiced in academia can be effective in increasing creativity in the workplace and sustainable health in future working lives. Higher education programs should include more art-related creativity training programs in the future. A 10-step program is presented as an example.

Online music videos from I-pad, as a mediating element for communication between the youths and the elders, has been studied in a project in Sweden. It is a multi-purpose, arts-based intervention project for young adults interacting with 68 members of the elderly population who have dementia. The project aims to harness the technological sophistication of young adults to offer elderly sufferers of dementia access to music videos which the elderly participant remembers from their youth. The process also includes nurses and family relatives to the elderly. The interactive outcome of the project was analysed with qualitative data. The dementia sufferers were emotionally stimulated, and for the families of the residents, it provides a model and a transitional space within which to connect to their family member with dementia. For the caretakers, it enriches their programme and humanize the heavy work load of caring. For the youth, it helps counter a culture that is too involved in computers by redeveloping experience with non-verbal human interaction based on empathy and emotional and embodied knowledge. On the other hand, the I-pad activity was also experienced from the nurses as a threat to their own role, pushing them away from more meaningful emotional interactions with the resident. The nurses also felt they had no time to do these “meaningful” things because of heavily work load. Non-verbal embodied communication, emotional mind and arts in health theories will be used to discuss the findings.

Singing, health and well-being in school – a societal matter.

There remains a lack of research examining how song activities integrated within the school day can support children’s cognitive and language development, contribute to improved learning environments, and strengthen social bonds. In this presentation, we will describe our ongoing randomized control study, Sånghälsa i Skolan – en samhällilig angelägenhet, which seeks to measure the effects of integrated singing activities on lower school children’s cognitive, language and social development, well-being and classroom environment. It is unique in terms of the combined broad multidisciplinary backgrounds of the research team and reference group, brings a wide range of professional competences and theoretical perspectives from diverse fields: speech therapy, music and health, music education, social medicine, sound and music computing and music psychology. The central aim is to examine the effect of a model for research-based, developmentally appropriate singing instruction integrated into the school day on primary school children’s sense of well-being and learning environment, as well as measurement of associations between singing and cognitive, language and social competences. During a five-week period, students (N=? ) participate in a daily 15-minute singing activity in their homeroom classroom. Two out of three randomly selected schools will be followed through an evidence based, structured intervention during one term, with a third school serving as a control. In this presentation, study methods and preliminary results from a pilot study conducted in spring 2022 will be discussed, as well as methods used for creating the 15-minute daily singing activities together with participating music teachers. The study’s second focus is to promote the classroom soundscape. Based on the study’s results a robotic measurement device for the monitoring of the sound environment before and after singing activities will be developed and implemented, offering a feedback function for study participants aimed at promoting good learning environments. This pilot project is as a potential study contributing to measures and methods for optimizing classroom soundscapes. Our overarching ambition with the intended project is to build a sustainable research platform for singing, health and well-being in schools and serve for a wider national initiative in Sweden.

How can we use art to prepare students, through higher education, to lead a sustainable and healthy working life. Studies linking the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the Agenda 2030 into higher education practice are few. The aim is to build embodied knowledge from our research on HeArtS – an educational platform for “Arts & Health & Sustainability” for future working life for students. Together we will explore different themes i.e.: “Educating meaning instead of perfection”, “Focus on challenges and skills that you are not good at” and “Collective self-awareness and body awareness training and sharing”- themes that can be effective for enhancing workplace creativity and sustainable health in working life. This presentation will inspire the use of more art-related creativity training in future higher academic programs and is part of the Erasmus Plus: ARTHEWE – program.

For academic researchers the use of retreats in not yet commonly presented in the literature, and thus evaluations are also scarce. The increasing administrative burden as well as the pressure to “publish or perish” is well known. Being a researcher and seeking knowledge means that you face a potentially limitless amount of work and therefore it is important that we become more aware of our embodiment and adept in the skills of reading the warning signals of stress. Many musicians share this experience

The results show a strong correlation between perceived value and shared experience where the sharing of the natural space was felt to put humanity in perspective. Irrespective of how the different workshops were evaluated, the total experience was related to a strong embodied share dexperience.

Conclusion: 1.We need of a new vocabulary for researching researchers’ and musicians well-being, 2.The capacity of nature-related activities ability and meaning in the curriculum of academic life and in the life of a musician is warranted.

There are few studies on how engagement with the arts can nurture health in school systems and how this knowledge can prepare students, through higher education, to a more sustainable and healthy working life (Bojner Horwitz et al., 2021, Bojner Horwitz et al. , 2022). Few studies link the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the agenda 2030 into higher education practice (Bell, 2019). Therefore, and the rational for our research is the need to generate and share knowledge on how students, teachers, and researchers can connect the SDGs to pedagogical practice, and how this relates to their sustainable healthy working life. “Sustainable and healthy working life-engaging through music and other creative activities” is the overall project name from which this research stems and which is a part of an Erasmus Plus programme, hosted at Turku Univer- sity of Applied Sciences in Turku, Finland. The “Agenda for research on the sustainable of public health programs” with the following variables: 1) Trust, 2) Capacity for learning, 3) Capacity for self-organization, 4) Diversity and 5) Common meaning, has inspired our work and built our theoretical background. To be able to understand how to build educational programmes that introduce and prepare students for a healthy and sustainable working life, we interviewed master students from the programme in Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo), students from the Teacher Education programme and students from the Music Therapy programme at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. The overall aim is to gather information from creative music students from three different music education programmes, to be able to integrate sustainable and healthy knowledge-based curricula within artistic higher education programmes targeting students’ working life more specifically. This knowledge will help us build an educational platform for “arts & health” that facilitates students’ sustainable future working life. Our results suggest several practical implications for a programme for students that seeks to facilitate sustainable healthy working lives. The results strongly imply that art- based curricula or the art intervention programmes increasingly practiced in academia can be effective for enhancing workplace creativity and thereby sustainable health. The link between creativity and health needs to be better integrated in higher education. We suggest that educational programmes should employ more art-related creativity train- ing. We also suggest that we need more research on how to support the development of teachers’ creative problem-solving abilities, especially in the context of new skills de- velopment. Most educational programmes do not provide any type of formal creativity training for employees working in key areas of innovation and creativity. Our results show that continuously working with Health-Arts-Sustainability (here referred to HeArtS) later in the work environment could enhance creative capabilities, thereby driving innovation into a healthier working life for students, researchers and for teachers. Our next step is to spread and evaluate the HeArtS platform, through European implementation.

What researchers see in pre-school children's reactions to live classical piano music, and how this knowledge can be interpreted into a broader societal context, is the focus of this study. The specific purpose was to see how a transdisciplinary group of researchers, interpreted 32 pre-school children’s´ reactions when listening to a short live classical professional piano concert, Beethoven's piano sonata No. 23, Op. 57 ‘Appassionata’, first movement. The children were video recorded before, during and after the piano concert and were asked to draw self-figure drawings before and after the live concert. Through body language- and cognitive/verbal reactions, interviews, analyses of movements and self-figure drawings, a rich data from the pre-school children were analyzed and discussed. The concert affected the children in different ways and as interpreted from the narratives from the pre-school teachers; the children were absorbed and energized many days after the concert.Research collaborations across disciplinary boundaries are needed to deepen the knowledge of how music can contribute to children's creativity, curiosity, physical security, and creative learning for the coming school year. We need to look deeper into the meaning of kinesthetic musicality in pre-school contexts and more frequently ask in what ways knowledge is taught and organized.  

This case-study presents different strategies that were explored by the patient ́s mother (who is a researcher in music and medicine) when her 17-year-old daughter was diagnosed with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) – also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). ME is not widely recognized in the Global as well as the Swedish population at large, and within healthcare there are no standardized recommended treatments, partly due to the lack of  published evidence-based studies. This case-study aims to provide insights into how the  Swedish healthcare system works, how different clinics and hospitals within it operate and interconnect; and how these contribute to health outcomes after 15 months of treatment.

The purpose of the study is to explore a new research methodology that will improve our understanding of "flow" through indicators of physiological and qualitative state. We examine indicators of ‘flow’ experienced by musicians of a youth string quartet, two women (25, 29), and two men (23, 24). Electrocardiogram (ECG) equipment was used to record heart rate variability (HRV) data throughout the four movements in one and the same quartet performed during two concerts. Individual physiological indicators of flow were supplemented by assessments of group ‘state flow’ (means from  standardized questionnaires) and a group interview in which the musicians provided qualitative data. A matrix was constructed for the characterization of different kinds of demands in the written music in each one of the four movements for each one of the musicians. HRV derived from ECG data showed non-significant trends for group state flow across the eight musical episodes. Individual-level analysis showed that compared to the other players the first violin player had the highest mean heart rate and the lowest increase in High Frequency power (HF) in HRV during this particular movement, particularly during the second concert. The qualitative data illustrated how an interplay of synchronised social interactions between this player and their colleagues during the musical performance was associated with a feeling of group state flow and served to support the first violinist. The case illustrates that the proposed mixed methodology drawing on physiological and qualitative data, has the potential to provide meaningful information about experiences of a flow state, both at individual and group level. Applications in future research are possible.

The purpose of the study is to explore a new research methodology that will improve our understanding of "flow" through indicators of physiological and qualitative state. We examine indicators of ‘flow’ experienced by musicians of a youth string quartet, two women (25, 29), and two men (23, 24). Electrocardiogram (ECG) equipment was used to record heart rate variability (HRV) data throughout the four movements in one and the same quartet performed during two concerts. Individual physiological indicators of flow were supplemented by assessments of group ‘state flow’ (means from standardized questionnaires) and a group interview in which the musicians provided qualitative data. A matrix was constructed for the characterization of different kinds of demands in the written music in each one of the four movements for each one of the musicians. HRV derived from ECG data showed non-significant trends for group state flow across the eight musical episodes. Individual-level analysis showed that compared to the other players the first violin player had the highest mean heart rate and the lowest increase in High Frequency power (HF) in HRV during this particular movement, particularly during the second concert. The qualitative data illustrated how an interplay of synchronised social interactions between this player and their colleagues during the musical performance was associated with a feeling of group state flow and served to support the first violinist. The case illustrates that the proposed mixed methodology drawing on physiological and qualitative data, has the potential to provide meaningful information about experiences of a flow state, both at individual and group level. Applications in future research are possible.

AbstractTransition to sustainability is a process that requires change on all levels of society from the physical to the psychological. This review takes an interdisciplinary view of the landscapes of research that contribute to the development of pro-social behaviors that align with sustainability goals, or what we call ‘inner sustainability’. Engaging in musical and dance activities can make people feel trust and connectedness, promote prosocial behavior within a group, and also reduce prejudices between groups. Sustained engagement in these art forms brings change in a matter of seconds (such as hormonal changes and associated stress relief), months (such as improved emotional wellbeing and learning outcomes), and decades (such as structural changes to the brains of musicians and dancers and superior skills in expressing and understanding emotion). In this review, we bridge the often-separate domains of the arts and sciences by presenting evidence that suggests music and dance promote self-awareness, learning, care for others and wellbeing at individual and group levels. In doing so, we argue that artistic practices have a key role to play in leading the transformations necessary for a sustainable society. We require a movement of action that provides dance and music within a constructive framework for stimulating social sustainability.

Background: Music listening can improve acquisition of new knowledge.Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the emotional and cognitive effects of a knowledge concert on the attending audience. Methodology: The audience was asked to complete a Visual Analogue Scale (10 cm) before and after listening to the concert, along five variables: Arousal, Degree of happiness, Degree of worry, Daily worries and Benevolence. Follow-up qualitative interviews gathered narratives from the participants. Findings: 228 concert attendees took part in the study by completing the questionnaires (51 percent of the whole audience). Statistically significant changes were observed in the outcome measures for: Arousal (p=0.002), Daily worries (p<0.001) and Degree of happiness (p=0.01). Degree of worry interacted with age (p<0.001). No changes were found for Benevolence (p=0.93). Gender and previous music experiences did not make a difference to feelings evoked by the music. Age, however, was important since younger participants became more worried by the concert than older. Originality: We discuss the potential role of future knowledge concerts that comprise qualities explored, such as mitigating a variety of embodied psychological capacities, including reflection and agency in audiences, facilitating learning about sensitive issues, and potentially also transformation towards prosocial mindsets and behavior.

Listening to music can facilitate improvement of cognitive skills and emotional intelligence, which are key antecedents of learning. Music listening can also improve auditory perception and memory. 

Adjacent to a concert of music evoking strong emotions, the audience was asked to complete a Visual Analogue Scale (10-cm) before and after listening to the concert, along five variables Arousal, Joy, Degree of upset, Daily worries and Benevolence. Changes in the responses to these scales were subject to analysis.

Statistically significant changes were observed in the outcome measures of arousal (p=0.005), daily worries (p<0.001), degree of upset (p=0.048) and joy (p<0.001) but were not found for benevolence (p=0.93) in 228 concert attendees who completed the questionnaires. Age, gender and previous music experiences did not make a difference to perception of the music.

Attending a music concert with sensitive, emotionally charged topics significantly contributed to stimulating emotional interpretation, which was used as preparation for a reflective participation in subsequent satellite seminars.

BACKGROUND: There has been insufficient study about how academic working life of researchers can be supported. 

OBJECTIVE: We examine the use of a nature and art-related activity retreat designed for researchers. The purpose was to evaluate if and how researchers perceived different workshop experiences set in nature as meaningful and important with regards to their self-care. 

METHODS: A mixed group of six researchers from Sweden, Finland, and the United States met for a three-day retreat consisting of self-selected nature and art-related activities. From data constituted from participant reflections, a focus group interview, a three months follow-up questionnaire, and an analysis of the workshops undertaken; three major themes were identified: “Sharing and connection”, “Embodiment” and “Nature”.

RESULTS: Analysis of the workshop-style exercises did not show significant variance in reported meaningfulness and usefulness related to the activity itself. However, there was a strong correlation between perceived value and shared experience where the sharing of the natural space was felt to put humanity in perspective. 

CONCLUSION: Organizing and systematizing health preventive retreats for researchers in academia may be an important part of the sustainabile academic community in which the researcher needs to be better taken care of in a more embodied way. Although this study was conducted prior to COVID-19, such retreats and potentially also on-line versions) could be useful for managing through the pandemic and afterwards, in our new “normal”.

Both singing and playing instruments in a group have been described in narratives as activities that increase cohesiveness. It has been speculated that music making is at the core of cultural activities in the history of humans. Music, dance and religious rituals including visual arts may have arisen because it was necessary to create strong and reliable bonds in a group, and such activities were effective for achieving this goal. This may even have increased chances of survival in life-threatening environments and this may still be true.  According to our study of the Swedish Twin Registry, there is a clear relationship between total number of music practice hours in life (particularly ensemble practice) and ability to handle emotions. In monozygotic twins who are within-pair discordant with regard to piano-playing (one twin has practiced piano extensively and the other not) it has been shown that the size of the corpus callosum, the bridge between the right and the left hemispheres, is larger in the playing twin. Since corpus callosum is important not only for coordination of muscles in the right and left halves of the body but also for emotional skill this is of particular importance – music training may stimulate parts of the brain that govern emotion handling. During performance, strong group interactions can occur both within a music ensemble and between the ensemble and the audience. In our group we have an ongoing project MUSETHICA that examines biological, psychological and social processes when one ensemble plays the same piece in front of different audiences. Accordingly, the audience reaction is studied by means of visual analogue scales, group flow in the ensemble by means of a standardized questionnaire (flow synchronization scale) and heart rate variability on line (for the assessment of sympathetic and parasympathetic balance) during the concerts in all the members of the ensemble. Qualitative interview data focusing on perceived performance quality, group flow and support are collected. Results from a feasibility study will be presented. A string quartet whose young members are going through the advanced training program MUSETHICA for chamber music is performing the same quartet (Haydn opus 76 number 2, D minor) on two occasions the same day with two different audiences of school children aged 13-15. Despite the small size of the study sample the analyses of heart rate variability show that there was a borderline significant variability across the different movements on the two occasions with regard to parasympathetic (high frequency power) and sympathetic (heart rate) activity – with evidence of low sympathetic and high parasympathetic activity during the second occasion during the playing of movement 2. The children showed more uniform reactions on the second occasion according to VAS ratings. The feasibility study shows that it is practically possible to study these complex interactions and that the joint methodology has the potential of showing interesting processes related to group playing. 

In this article, we summarize some features of the growing research in mu- sic and health conducted in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The research traditions in the four countries have developed differently and com- plement each other. There is neurobiological and psychophysiological re- search with experimental elements, epidemiological investigations both of the prevalence in the population of people who experience music and the connection between musical activities and various aspects of health, as well as research on how different types of music listening and practicing music affect people psychologically and physiologically. Research on the role of music in emotional processing has also a central role in the field, as does the role of music in aging and in specific diseases. All of this has implications for music’s potential role in health work.

The present study aimed to increase understanding of how singing activities may be initiated in primary school, and what support and assistance teachers require to conduct singing activities as an integrated part of the school day. Five music teachers participated in a focus group interview. The following main themes were identified: 1) pedagogical and methodological flexibility, 2) the role of routines and familiarity, 3) the embodied and multimodal dimensions of singing, 4) the importance of accompaniment and instruments, 5) the experience of insecurity and obstacles, and 6) the perceived synergies between singing and other learning activities. This knowledge may be important to integrate within music teacher education in order to secure singing’s place in schools. 

There are few studies on how engagement with the arts can nurture health in school systems and how this knowledge can prepare students, through higher education, to a more sustainable and healthy working life. Few studies link the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the agenda 2030 into higher education practice. Therefore, and the rational for this Intellectual output program is the need to generate and share knowledge on how students, teachers, and researchers can connect the SDGs to pedagogical practice, and how this relates to their sustainable healthy working life.