Mission and Vision
Mission
The Danish National Academy is tasked with – on an artistic and, where relevant, scientific basis – providing education in music and musical education and associate subject areas at the highest level. Furthermore, SDMK must conduct artistic and educational development and, on a scientific basis, research within the institution’s subject areas. Finally, the institution is tasked with promoting its artistic area and the associated cultural life and with propagating knowledge of working methods and results within its subject areas.
Vision
The Danish National Academy of Music offers practice-related musical study programmes at international level. We educate proactive musicians who can and will take responsibility for their own careers as performers, instructors and artistic entrepreneurs. SDMK positions itself as a reflecting and innovative knowledge institution which involves practice, teachers and students in its development activities. SDMK is a cultural institution that reaches out, interacts with its surroundings and constitutes a natural hot spot for local, regional and national artistic experiences.
Core Values
Educational and Working Foundation
We wish to be known as a progressive and purposeful educational institution, whose graduates are capable of contributing to the changeable artistic and educational labour market – at national as well as international levels.
We wish to create a study environment that promotes optimal academic and personal development among our students, who may thus establish their own profile in a multi-faceted music career.
We believe that explicitness, orderliness and consequence in all contexts are a precondition for accomplishing our joint task, and that involving processes represent the best basis for a dedicated effort.
THEREFORE
We expect our students to take co-responsibility for their own education through a dedicated study effort characterised by a high degree of practising.
We assume that students as well as teachers, aside from striving to achieving the highest academic level, engage themselves in activities that help create a fruitful learning environment and institutional cohesion.
SDMK’s Values
The Danish National Academy of Music (SDMK) strives to develop its institutional culture on the basis of the following fundamental values that unfold both in an action-oriented, forward-looking dimension and a broad, unifying dimension:
Reflection, Courage and Drive
- SDMK educates musicians with insight and vision, and who can translate reflection into action.
- SDMK dares to insist that high professional competency is fundamental to any artistic expression.
- SDMK is conscious of the time we live in and believes that an academy with respect for tradition should also redefine, react and interact.
- The management, staff and students at SDMK dare to demand a lot from themselves and each other.
Diversity, Broadness and Cohesion
- SDMK offers holistic programmes capable of bringing art into play with the surrounding society.
- SDMK is aware of its responsibility as a highly valued and significant actor on the cultural scene.
- SDMK encourages interaction between subject areas, where feedback and inspiration are breeding ground for mutual respect and joint development.
- SDMK is an inclusive academy that values a cross-disciplinary community.
- SDMK insists on successful individual development and professional communities, and that communication across the levels is a joint responsibility.
Diversity charter
The higher education institutions under the Danish Ministry of Culture have signed a joint declaration on increased focus on diversity and inclusion. The background for the charter is a wish to focus on equal access to and equal opportunities within higher artistic education as the art schools consider diversity a creative and qualitative potential.