Professional conversation is often strongly formatted. Expert meeting, symposium, debate, study day and conference, they all follow well known traditional forms. We meet and talk within the lines of the symposium habits. Fixed underlying structures give direction to what we say and how we express ourselves. The pattern expects us to play a specific role and we adopt this role without resistance. It starts at a certain time and unfolds in a familiar way. We start to think about food and beverages too early and all that.

WHY DO WE DO THAT? CAN WE CHANGE THIS CONTEXT?

I was asked by ArtEZ (higher arts education) to moderate a symposium about 25 years professional jazz and pop education. All speakers turned out to be musicians as well: Co de Kloet, Koen Schouten and Merlijn Twaalfhoven. So I asked them to bring their instruments and do the symposium in a more improvised setting. We played sometimes really theatrical improvised introductions to each others lectures. I accompanied some concluding parts plucking the cello. And I used the metaphor of improvisation to engage the audience more vividly in the discussion.
What do I notice if music is integrated?

- enthusiasm from organisers and participants for the concept. We seem to share this tired feeling about a whole afternoon of talking!;
- a playful attitude, fun and atmosphere;
- sharp montage also in the conversation, if done with a musical ear moving back and forth between music and language;
- more narrative and sometimes provocative imagination;
- and last but not least: a natural focus that brought different perspectives together.

How to continue this ‘cultural intervention’ when not all speakers are musicians?
I’ll tell you. Bring in musicians, ask participants for quotations, accompany them while they read some poetry, change the order, the roles and so on and so on. Then we start listening and questioning again. Let the ‘the element of play’ change our conversational conventions.