Camilla Sarner is a doctoral student at the University of Music and Performing Arts, where she is engaged in music pedagogical research and teaching in cultural school didactics and pedagogy. She is a music teacher with a Degree of Master of Arts (60 credits). Her professional background is as a cultural school director and sector manager for 20 years in the City of Gothenburg. During her years as director of Angered’s cultural school, El Sistema was started, where she initiated extensive development work together with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Later, together with Gustavo Dudamel and several others, she founded the El Sistema Foundation. As an operations manager, she introduced El Sistema’s working methods in around 40 municipalities in Sweden and was a pre-study leader and initiator of starting an international music camp in Gothenburg similar to Gothia Cup, which became Side by Side by El Sistema.
On the academic side, she has worked with music education since the 90s, focusing on cultural schools and instrumental and ensemble education. During 2018 – 2019, she was the project manager for launching a new cultural schoolteacher education program at the Faculty of Arts at GU. Since 2020, she has been a doctoral student in music pedagogy and is researching educational paths to musician education.
Camilla helped start Dream Orchestra together with Ron Davis Alvaréz, among others. This was in 2016 during the great refugee crisis and she has since then, as chairwoman of Dream Orchestra, worked to continue developing music education with inclusive ambitions.
Camilla Sarner has received multiple awards for her contributions to music for children and young people. In 2018, she received Faktum’s prize in the category Integration of the Year; in 2014, she was awarded the Alfons Åberg Culture Prize; in 2012, Vision’s Culture Prize; in 2010, the Torgny Segerstedt Democracy Prize. In 2006, the Angered School of Culture was named Culture School of the Year, and in 2004, the Angered International School of Dance and Music was named Project of the Year by the then SMoK and the Swedish Music Council.
