Eleanor Ryan Photo: Marlon James
Eleanor Ryan has taken on an important topic.
She’s currently doing a PhD at Cambridge University, writing a thesis on decolonising performance pedagogies in Higher Education.
Coloniality is defined as the control and management of knowledge, values and ways of being. Eleanor is investigating how this is experienced today in the classical music world and, how this imbalance might be addressed by both students and teachers.
Eleanor’s own experience teaching classical students violin at the University of Trinidad and Tobago was one of the catalysts for her study.
She talked with Three to Seven host Bryan Crump about an uncomfortable realisation she had during a one-to-one lesson, and asked herself:
“To what extent am I constantly imitating the past, embodying the past, rather than entering into relation with the people I am working with now, the culture I’m working with now, and how is that actually changing my practice?”
"I think the question for us as teachers is to always be open to our own practice changing, that our interactions with our students are not a one-way street.”
“It can create new pedagogies, it can create new music.”
