Today is Tuesday, August 11th, and let’s begin this thirty-second episode.
In December 1985, I was just over twenty years old, and I was a first-year student at DAMS in Bologna.
Those were full years.
Alongside university, I was preparing, as a private candidate, for my eighth-year piano exam. I remember dividing my time between books and musical scores.
I had not yet clearly focused on music therapy.
Only three years later would I make my choice.
But in December 1985, I was still in a phase of unconscious incubation, and so I missed something that only today, perhaps in retrospect, we are able to grasp fully in all its importance.
What am I talking about?
The Fifth World Congress of Music Therapy.
A unique congress for at least two reasons.
It was the first world congress held in our country — and, to this day, the only one.
But above all, it was there that the World Federation of Music Therapy was officially founded.
You understood correctly.
It happened here.
In Italy.
In Genoa!
All right… perhaps I am getting a little carried away with enthusiasm, but we are talking about the WFMT.
And I was not there!
Of course, over the years I then had the opportunity to attend a few Italian conferences, a few European conferences, and the World Congress in Oxford in 2002.
After Genoa, every three years the congress machine moved on: from Rio to Vitoria in Spain, to Hamburg, Washington, Oxford, Brisbane, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Krems in Austria, Tsukuba in Japan, Pretoria online.
In 2023, the seventeenth congress will be held in Australia.
And then, ladies and gentlemen — attention, attention — in 2026, for the second time in forty-one years since the foundation of the World Federation of Music Therapy, Italy, and specifically Bologna, will host the Eighteenth World Congress of Music Therapy!
But do you know how the host country is selected?
Until just a few hours ago, I knew nothing about the mechanisms.
I did not know what happened behind the scenes, so I called Marinella Maggiori, who very kindly explained everything to me.
Well, first of all, you need to know that it is not as if any one of us can simply wake up in the morning and say:
“Right, I want to organise the World Congress of Music Therapy at my house.”
For anyone who decides to compete as a candidate, the sine qua non prerequisite is to be a full member of the World Federation of Music Therapy.
And AIM, the Italian Association of Music Therapy Professionals, has been a full member for a couple of years.
Another thing I discovered is that the allocation is a real competition.
A proper bidding process.
A candidacy.
The countries that wish to host the World Congress send a bid seven years in advance.
Seven years, do you understand?
The bid is the proposal, the offer, the sustainable and detailed project that the country aspiring to host the Congress must produce in order to convince the Organising Committee.
In other words, you have to decide the theme, the location, the venues for all the scientific and artistic events that will take place during those days.
You work with a PCO — a Professional Congress Organiser.
You make agreements and arrangements with the city’s institutions.
You create a scientific committee, an organising committee, and a technical committee.
In short, you set up a war machine.
And then you cross your fingers, because all of this is also being done by the other countries that want to host the Congress.
This time, there were the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg — the Benelux countries — and Canada.
For Italy, the bid was presented by AIM, the Italian Association of Music Therapy Professionals.
The exact date was June 30th, 2019.
Uncertainty, anxiety, doubts — and finally the verdict.
As tradition requires, the announcement of the country chosen to host the Congress was made on Monday, July 6th, during the closing ceremony of the World Congress in Pretoria.
I did a few calculations.
As of July 8th, 2026, there are 2,157 days left.
308 weeks.
Five years, eleven months, and a bit.
Are you ready?
I will be sixty.
Wow.
Doing these calculations is a little frightening, but that’s fine.
I’ll be there.
And what about you?
What are you planning to do?
Considering how big the world is, you had better do the maths, because another forty years may pass before this event happens again in Italy.
Of course, if you are young and strong, nothing and no one prevents you from doing an encore.
Personally, I think that would be difficult.
But if they give me the prize for being a one-hundred-year-old music therapy practitioner, I might make the effort and give it some thought!
I’ll stop here.
We’ll meet again on Tuesday, August 18th, with a new episode of A Light-Hearted Journey Through Music Therapy.