Music Fund (2004-today)

in short

Music Fund was created in 2004-2005 and was an initiative of a music ensemble (Ictus) and a NGO (Oxfam Belgium). Music Fund collects music instruments allover Europe, has them checked in workshops in Belgium, and then donates them to partner-projects (music schools or socio-artistic programs) in Palestine, Israel, DRCongo, Mozambique, Morocco, Haiti, Belgium, Germany, and soon also in Myanmar and Vietnam. Besides donating instruments, the main activity of Music Fund has quickly become the training of repair-technicians and opening and equipping repair workshops for its partners outside Europe. Lukas Pairon is founder and CEO.

media

All films and videos can be found here on the vimeo channel of Music Fund, and a selection of pictures can be found by clicking right here. Facebook-pages of Music Fund are here.

interviews:

-MO Magazine: https://www.mo.be/reportage/music-fund

SIMM (2015-today)

in short

SIMM (Social Impact of Making Music) is an international network of scholars developing research on the possible role of music in participatory social and community work (created in 2017). Lukas Pairon is the initiator and now executive director of SIMM.

Founding president is John Sloboda (2017-2022), and since 2023  Brydie-Leigh Bartleet is president of SIMM.

Chair Jonet (2022-today)

In 2022 Lukas Pairon founded and was the first chair holder of the academic Chair Jonet & CESAMM (Centre for Social Action & Music-Making) at the University and University College of Ghent, accompanying researchers as well as practitioners in this field.

From 2023-2024 on, Prof An De bisschop took over and is now the chair holder of this academic chair.

Lukas Pairon is connected to the Chair Jonet as guest professor.

The Academic Chair Jonet and Centre for Social Action & Music-Making (CESAMM) propose since 2022-2023 training and research on socially oriented music practices at the Ghent University and University of Applied Sciences and Arts Ghent.

The strong link between research and practice is an important spearhead in the functioning of the Chair and Centre, as it is committed to integrating the development of high-quality research of social music practice, as well as accompaniment and training of social music facilitators (musicians and social workers).

It focuses on investigating and developing the empowering nature of music to generate social impacts, and thereby contribute to building a society that values and fosters diversity and inclusiveness.

Even though in the past decades a lot of social music projects have developed strongly in different countries, and even though an ever-growing number of musicians and cultural workers want to be active in this field, there is no training and research centre which is fully dedicated to this domain.

Partnerships

The creation of the Chair Jonet was made possible thanks to the financial input of 2 main sponsors – the VGP Foundation and the Fondation Futur 21 – and of 6 major Belgian music centres, which also take on the role of 'hubs' to bring together practitioners of social and community music projects in their region: deSingel, Concertgebouw Brugge, De Centrale, HA Concerts, Brussels Philharmonic and Klara Festival. From the start a close collaboration is being engaged in with the London based Guildhall School of Music, and partnerships with other academic partners and music centres are under negotiation.

PhD research (2012-2018)

They Say Music Saved Them

a research on the possible social impact of music-making (SIMM) for young people in Kinshasa, DRCongo 

University of Ghent (UGent), Department of Political and Social Sciences, Conflict Research Group 

in collaboration with and with the support of the School of Arts (University College of Ghent)

supervisor: Prof Koen Vlassenroot (then head of the Conflict Research Group, a multidisciplinary research unit at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Ghent - www.psw.ugent.be/crg)

This PhD-research is interested in understanding how the experience of structured musical practice and education can have an influence on the lives of young people in the difficult living conditions of Kinshasa. The young musicians who have participated in this research come out of complicated social backgrounds – young adult men who were members of violent gangs, and young adult men and women who were as so-called 'witch'-children living in the streets of Kinshasa. They all believe that their becoming musicians has played an important role in (re-)constructing their lives, and express this by telling us that they were "saved by music".

Research question:

What is the significance of music making proposed as part of social music projects to young people in the poverty-stricken surroundings of Kinshasa?

Methodology:

A qualitative approach is taken, closely following several case studies in Kinshasa (DR Congo) of young musicians (17 to 41 years old) who report that important social changes happened in their lives thanks to their study and practice of music. The main research tools of this PhD are semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups, as well as participative observation. The fieldwork was spread over a period of four years, with preliminary interviews in 2012 and 2013 (one month), and then six times one month of fieldwork in 2014 and in 2015. The data include transcriptions of a total of up to 160 hours of interviews.

Routledge New York published in 2020 this book 'Music Saved Them, They Say' which Lukas Pairon wrote following this research.

Postdoc research (2024-2025)

Follow-up research in Kinshasa in 2024 and 2025

Thanks to the support of the Foundation Inspiratum of Axel Vervoordt and Koen Kessels, of la Banda da Musica and of the Compagnie Sucrière, Lukas Pairon returns to Kinshasa for one month in 2024 and one month in 2025 to conduct further research with the young musicians who took part in his PhD-research from 2012 to 2016 – former members of violent gangs ('kuluna') and young people formerly known as 'witch-children' and 'street children' ('sheges') who have become musicians.

During this further research he revisits them and explores with them the role that learning music may have played in their lives – whether they remained musicians or not.

Routledge New York plans to publish a new short-format book written on this further research in their 'focus titles' series. The French version of this new book will also be available in free access.

The Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena decided to invite Lukas Pairon for the period 2024-2025 as a visiting scholar, enabling him to develop this post-doctoral research, accompanied by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa from this institute. And biologist Olivier Hamant (INRAE, École Normale Supérieure, Lyon University) also accompanies this follow-up research in Kinshasa.

Glazza (2016-today)

Glazza is supporting projects in Gaza and elsewhere with stained glass windows artist Michèle Vanvlasselaer. See a film on the start-up of the project in Gaza here.

Synagogue Heide (2020)

Heide-Kalmthout is the village where Lukas Pairon grew up. It has an impressive Jewish history, exemplified by the presence in the village of the first Jeshiva of Belgium, and a rare village synagogue which urgently needs to be restored.

See a short presentation (in Dutch) here, and an long interview (in Dutch) with Lukas' friend David Susskind who tells about his adolescent years as a student in the Jeshiva of Heide here.

Ictus (1994-2012)

The Brussels based Ictus is now one of the most appreciated and internationally touring contemporary classical music soloist ensemble of Europe, often closely working with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's dance company Rosas. Lukas Pairon was founding director of the ensemble (from 1994 to 2012).

3rdParty (2009-2012)

Lukas Pairon was initiator and coordinator of the program 3rdParty, which from 2009 to 2012 brought 4-5 times per year Israeli and Palestinian peace activists to 3 different secondary schools in the city of Antwerp, Belgium, where they met with 18-year old students, explaining them how they continued – against all odds – to dream of and act towards a peaceful co-existence in the Middle East. At the end of each school-year, Lukas took a selection of the Antwerp youth for a one-week trip to visit the peace activists projects and families in the West Bank and Israel. Following this 3-year program, Simone Susskind set up a similar program in Brussels with the NGO Actions in the Mediterranean (AIM). Lukas is president of AIM.