Georgia Nicolaou
Moving towards resilience: Joint creation through music and movement for local, refugee and immigrant children.
Project description
The aim of this PhD research is to grow as an artist-educator through the development of research-based practices that use the “power of music” to have a meaningful social impact. The starting point is the idea that the integration of joint music making moving together, can help to build resilience. The focus lies on the role of bodily movement in music education for heterogenous groups of local, newly arrived immigrant and refugee children.
About Georgia
Georgia Nicolaou (1990) is a Cypriot composer, musician, researcher and educator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She holds a master’s degree in Composition from Codarts University of the Arts, and she previously studied Composition at the Utrecht Conservatory and the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece. She is currently a PhD candidate at Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp – AP University College and the University of Antwerp under the supervision of Prof. Peter van Petegem, Prof. Luc Nijs and dr. Bob Selderslaghs. She also follows the Certification program in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies at EMOVE Institute in Amsterdam.
Between 2021-2022, she carried out an one-year research project, entitled “Moving in Musicking: Promoting social inclusiveness for children at risk” within CORPoREAL, at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp – AP University College, which evolved towards her PhD research. Besides, she was a member of the monitoring team of the Creative Europe Project “Resilience in resonance. Teaching children at risk to play an instrument through music and movement”, coordinated by Prof. dr. Luc Nijs. In addition, she is actively involved in the research platform, SIMM – Social Impact of Making Music and Music4Change, attending seminars and conferences and she presented her work at the SIMM-posium 2018 in Porto, the SIMM-posium 2021 in Paris, SIMM-posium 2022 in London and Music4Change 2023 in Bergen. Georgia also works as a music and movement teacher at Musica Impulscentrum in Belgium carrying out various creative music educational projects for children.
Further, she is an acclaimed composer, pianist and singer. She was awarded the Tera de Marez Oyens prize during the Gaudeamus Muziekweek Utrecht 2016. Georgia’s works have been performed in prestigious music and performing arts festivals, such as Circolo 2021, Operadagen Rotterdam 2019, de Parade 2019, November Music 2018, Transit 2018 and Gaudeamus 2016 & 2018 among others.