INVITATION

Dear colleagues, friends, and dear associates,

It is my great honour and pleasure to announce the first in a series of summer schools that will be organised on the theme of ‘Music and Human Potential: Education, Empowerment and Rehabilitation’.

The title of this year’s Summer school is Music as Support to Train Language Skills: Concepts, Methods, and Techniques to Empower and Rehabilitate Speech  Disorders in Children and Adults through Evidence-Based Musical Activities. 

As you already know, music therapy is a clinically and scientifically proven application of musical interventions with the aim of achieving individualised and clearly defined goals in therapeutic, psychological, and educational relationships with the help of a music therapist. It represents the use of music and/or its elements (sound, rhythm, melody, harmony), individually or in a group process, so as to provide and enhance communication and learning, stimulation of expression, and other important clinical goals, to achieve physical, emotional, mental, social, and cognitive needs.

There are a number of different evidence-based models and methods in music therapy, adapted to people with various difficulties. This summer school addresses those models and methods that are primarily focused on the rehabilitation of language difficulties. The aim of the summer school is to provide participants with a set of concepts and practical methods and techniques to encourage adoption or re-adoption of language skills, including clients with language impairments (aphasia, dysphasia, dyslexia, verbal dyspraxia, specific language disorders) in music-based training and training activities. This perspective supports the “transfer” from musical to linguistic abilities and the enhancement of general functions implied both in music and speech. The main part of the programme will be addressed to let participants, thanks to practical examples and simulations, learn some operational skills useful to the application of the described rehabilitation procedures for patients.

So, I invite you all to attend our summer school in the wonderful environment of the Spiritual-Educational Centre Mary’s Court in Lužnica, a baroque manor located just 20 kilometres west of Zagreb, surrounded by an 8 acre park with a small lake, woods, and walkways.

We look forward to welcoming you in Lužnica on 22-26 July 2019.

Ljiljana Pačić-Turk, Assistant Professor
Head of the Department of Psychology
Catholic University of Croatia