The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Management and Leadership [research group]
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PROGRAMME FORMAT
Stage I | Articulation and Presentation | November 2026
Stage I consists of two online seminars devoted to participants’ practices, organisations, current projects, and research questions. Each participant or group presents work in an appropriate form: organisational cases, strategic documents, programme concepts, governance models, budgets, policies, contracts, audience research, diagrams, data, reflective texts, or other relevant materials.
The purpose is not to demand a completed theory of management or leadership, but to make the operative questions of each practice visible. Participants will identify the concepts on which their work depends, the problems it addresses, the methods through which it proceeds, and its artistic, organisational, social, or ethical stakes. Discussion will attend to relations between declared values and everyday decisions, artistic ambitions and material conditions, leadership claims and authority, institutional missions and access, and strategic intentions and their consequences.
Moderated peer response will help participants distinguish productive questions from premature solutions, clarify unstable terms, and identify lines of inquiry that can advance the work. By the end of Stage I, each participant will have a provisional account of the philosophical premises of their practice and a focused set of questions for development.
Stage II | Critical Inquiry and Development | February 2027
Stage II consists of two online seminars devoted to collective inquiry into the grounds, methods, responsibilities, and functions of music management and leadership. Moving between shared questions and participants’ projects, the group will treat the field not as a settled body of techniques or transferable competencies, but as a practice whose forms of knowledge, judgement, and responsibility require examination.
Inquiry may encompass what an organisation, institution, project, or musical public is; how managers and leaders know, decide, learn, and justify action; how organisational structures shape artistic possibilities; how authority, legitimacy, care, representation, and participation are constituted; how value, scarcity, remuneration, and sustainability are negotiated; and how data, platforms, automation, ecological limits, and institutional futures alter practice.
Participants will develop policies, programmes, organisational experiments, strategic proposals, research texts, or other practice-based projects through sustained discussion. The aim is not a standard academic format or business plan, but greater conceptual precision, methodological coherence, practical relevance, and communicability. Each participant will formulate trajectories for further development, including assumptions to test, concepts to refine, relationships to reconsider, and forms of presentation to prepare before the public residency.
Stage III | Public Presentation and Exchange | June 2027
The programme culminates in research presentations, lectures, and public discussions at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia, bringing the online work into a concentrated artistic and intellectual context.
Participants will present their questions, methods, propositions, and outcomes in forms appropriate to their practices. Public presentation is understood not only as the reporting of results, but as a further stage of inquiry: an opportunity to test arguments, encounter responses, refine language, and consider how organisational knowledge changes in a shared discursive space.
The Bled residency enables exchange among managers, artistic leaders, composers, performers, researchers, cultural workers, and audiences. Participants can situate their projects within broader debates, develop lasting relationships, and contribute to an international discourse on the responsibilities and possibilities of organising musical life today.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io