Sensitisation and Awareness Raising
Our association Eben!Holz has set itself the goal of raising awareness, especially among trainees, pupils and students, of the impact of endangered tree species on musical instrument making. A group of association members is therefore dedicated to the field of education.
Sustainable thinking and action have been anchored in musical instrument making for centuries through the manufacture of durable products and is also passed down accordingly from generation to generation. However, an increasing number of wood species used in musical instrument making are threatened with extinction with immediate consequences for instrument makers and musicians. The accelerating environmental changes and rapid worldwide forest losses therefore increasingly require a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability and global interrelationships also in musical instrument making and among musicians.
Appropriate background knowledge of the natural materials used in musical instrument making is essential, especially for young and future instrument makers. However, the integration of various sustainability aspects and strategies is also becoming increasingly important for everyday workshop work. Imparting this knowledge and raising awareness for this topic is a concern of ours as an association. At the violin making school in Parma, the symposium on sustainability of the course of studies in musical instrument making in Markneukirchen, the international conference of the association 'Women in Lutherie' as well as the violin making days of the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and at a meeting of 25 young violin makers for a violin making workshop in Brandenburg an der Havel, we were already able to pass on background information and contexts to young instrument makers and musicians.
In the future, participatory forest projects with instrument making schools are also planned in order to convey theoretical and practical knowledge, to link them directly and to make them tangible for the students. In this way, the future instrument makers should be sensitized to this topic already during their education and it should be possible for them to contribute to the preservation of the forests and to explore sustainable ways for 'protection through use'.
We therefore offer especially for instrument makers and instrument making schools, but also music colleges and musicians the following opportunities, digitally or in presence, to expand and deepen their background knowledge on this topic:
Lectures & Expert seminars
Presentations and information on Eben!Holz activities
Development of joint participatory forest projects