The first speaker, José Castiñeira de Dios gave a remarkable speech posing many thought-provoking questions to the audience, such as: If we use musical practices as social instruments, are we forgetting the main value of music as a particular expressive language with no other objective than human expression? Furthermore, do we expect too much of music and musicians, if we ask them to solve social problems society is not able to solve?

Olivier Urbain presented different ways of measuring the social effects of specific musical activities, for example through interviews, surveys and analysis. He emphasised the importance of collecting facts and figures for the use of successful advocacy work and therefore argued that a balance was needed between results gathered through participant evaluation and hard factual evidence. View full presentation here.

The session was rounded off with an open discussion in which several comments and questions raised by the audience to which the speakers delivered detailed answers. One striking point for example made by a participant was, that "change" facilitated by music may not necessarily always be "good change" and therefore the term "social change" must be used carefully.