ResearchWorks: The Art of Positive Fatalism - lessons from Kinshasa

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This ResearchWorks session explores Lukas Pairon’s recent book The Art of Positive Fatalism – Lessons from Kinshasa (Edern Editions, 2026). Pairon will be joined in coversation by John Sloboda and Lucy Green, with Jonathan Vaughan moderating the exchange.

Drawing on long-term research and engagement with musicians and social music projects in Kinshasa, Pairon’s book explores what he calls positive fatalism: an attitude that combines acceptance of uncertainty and limited control with an active capacity to respond, improvise and remain engaged. Rather than presenting music as a straightforward instrument for social transformation, the book asks what can realistically be expected from participatory music-making in contexts marked by precarity, violence and profound social inequality.

The conversation will bring Pairon’s observations from Kinshasa into dialogue with John Sloboda’s and Lucy Green’s extensive work on music, participation, learning and social engagement. Together they will reflect critically on the assumptions that often underpin claims about music’s social impact, while considering what practitioners and researchers might learn from approaches grounded in modesty, resilience, relationality and attention to lived experience.

The event will include ample opportunity for exchange with the audience.

Speakers:

Lukas Pairon studied philosophy in Lugano, Switzerland, and educational sciences, specialising in politics of education, at Université Paris VIII-Vincennes. He began his career as a researcher in adult education and literacy at UNESCO in Paris and the Ministry of Culture of the French-speaking Community of Belgium.

At 27, he moved into the arts, becoming artistic director of contemporary music and dance at the Flanders Festival. He later co-founded Walpurgis, a production house for contemporary chamber opera and music theatre, and in 1994 co-founded the contemporary music ensemble Ictus, serving as its first general director until 2013.

He subsequently founded Music Fund and the educational programme 3rdParty. His doctoral research at Ghent University examined the potential significance of music-making in social projects in contexts of violence.

Pairon is founder and executive director of SIMM, the international research platform on the social impact of music-making. In 2022, he founded the Chair Jonet at Ghent University.

In 2024–2025, he conducted postdoctoral research in Kinshasa for the Institute of Sociology of the University of Jena, of which his book ‘The Art of Positive Fatalism’ describes its findings.

In 2018, he was awarded Commander in the Belgian Order of the Crown for his work as a cultural activist.

Lucy Green is Emerita Professor of Music Education at the UCL Institute of Education, London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is internationally recognised for her research in music education, particularly informal learning, popular music, gender, ideology, new pedagogies, and the sociology of music education.

Her influential books include Music on Deaf Ears (1988/2008), Music, Gender, Education (1997), How Popular Musicians Learn (2001/2002), and Music, Informal Learning and the School (2008). With David Baker, she co-authored Insights in Sound: Visually Impaired Musicians’ Lives and Learning (2017). Her teachers’ handbook Hear, Listen, Play! (2014) focuses on developing aural, improvisational, and performance skills.

Green developed and led the research project “Informal Learning in the Music Classroom” within the international Musical Futures movement, whose innovative approach has been implemented worldwide. She has lectured extensively across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas, and her work has been translated into numerous languages.

Her current research explores the revival of self-accompanied singing as a professional practice in classical music.

Professor John Sloboda is Emeritus Professor at Guildhall School, where he was founder of its Institute for Social Impact Research in the Performing Arts. He was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project "Music for Social Impact: Practitioners' contexts, work, and beliefs" from 2020-2023, and from 2009-2019 led Guildhall School's "Understanding Audiences" research programme.

He is Emeritus Professor at Keele and was a staff member of the School of Psychology at Keele from 1974-2008, where he was Director of its Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development, founded in 1991.

John is internationally known for his work on the psychology of music. He served a 3-year term as founding President of www.simm-platform.eu, an international platform for research into the Social Impact of Making Music. He was the recipient of the 1998 British Psychological Society's Presidents Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge, and in 2004 he was elected to Fellowship of the British Academy. In 2018, he was awarded an OBE for his services to psychology and music.

His books include Handbook of Music and Emotion (co-edited with Patrik Juslin), and Exploring the Musical Mind, both published by Oxford University Press. He continues a close association with Guildhall School, where he is currently co-supervising two doctoral students.

Jonathan Vaughan joined Guildhall School in 2007 as its Director of Music, and was appointed Principal in 2022.

He attended a comprehensive school in a heavily industrial part of the Midlands and attributes his career to the free music lessons he received at school, provided by Leicestershire’s outstanding music service. After studying double bass and piano at the Royal College of Music, he became a member of the London Symphony Orchestra for ten years, where he was elected Chairman in 1999.

He went on to become Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for five years, before joining Guildhall School.

In 2024, Jonathan was awarded the Freedom of the City of London by the Lord Mayor. He is currently studying for a PhD on the subject of ‘Artistic Citizenship and Performance Excellence in Music Conservatoires’. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and of Guildhall School, and was conferred the title of Professor of Music at Guildhall in 2021. He has been a Governor and Trustee for many arts organisations and currently sits on the board of the Young Classical Artist Trust, National Youth Jazz Collective and Mendelssohn Boise Scholarship Foundation.