This 90-minute workshop examines how democratic music education can be conceptualized and practiced, drawing on design-based research within the European project TEAM – Teacher Education Academy for Music. Building on theoretical perspectives in democratic music education (Allsup, 2007; Woodford, 2005; DeLorenzo, 2016), the session is grounded in the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018), which addresses values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge and critical understanding. Through a combination of practice-based activities and collective reflection, the workshop investigates how democratic practices can be articulated and enacted in music education.

The workshop is a revised version of the student session at the EAS in Dublin 2024. Participants begin with a participatory warm-up, followed by a phase of personal reflection. In small groups, they then share and discuss their own experiences with democracy and participation in educational contexts. These reflections are subsequently connected to designs and impulses developed within TEAM, enabling participants to generate insights that inform both their pedagogical practice and the project’s ongoing research.

The format is embedded in TEAM’s iterative research design. First insights from reconstructive studies of explicit and implicit knowledge on democracy and participation in music universities suggest that the democratic norm is reflected in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in everyday practice (Buchborn & Stade, 2025). By situating personal perspectives within a research-informed framework, the workshop contributes to a European discourse on how democratic principles can be meaningfully integrated into music teaching and learning across varied contexts.