The legendary NIGEL OSBORNE -- Composer, Educator and International Aid Worker -- delivers the 2024 Annual Torrance Lecture.

A new era for music and art in service of community healing

Music and art have been in a state of turbulent change for well over a century, largely because of the effects of new technologies. We may now be at the beginning of a much deeper change, taking place at the margins of our culture rather than in the mainstream, and driven by biology, psychology, and social forces as well as technology. I shall show examples of work with children in flashpoints in Ukraine and the Middle East, and report on new technologies being developed to offer disabled artists the chance to co-create and share states of body and mind remotely. The unique power of the music and other creative arts in countering human adversity and enabling the strengthening of communities will be illustrated in this lecture.

Nigel Osborne MBE is a British composer, teacher and aid worker. Known for his extensive charity work supporting war-traumatised children using music and creative arts therapy techniques, especially in the Balkans during the Bosnian War, the Syrian conflict, and currently in Ukraine. He has pioneered the development of new treatments in music-medicine for epilepsy, sleep disorders and PTSD, and the first functioning computational model of the musical brain -- X-System. He is Emeritus Professor of Music and Human Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and has received many awards for his work, including the Koussevitzky Award of the Library of Congress Washington, the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers Award (BASCA) for Inspiration, the Freedom Prize of the Peace Institute, Sarajevo and the Doubleday Medal for contributions to medicine.

Admission is FREE, but registration is required. Please visit https://tinyurl.com/tclecture24 to reserve your spot!