Jari Perkiömäki

Introduktion

Throughout my working life I have been building on the principles I have learned from active art making: curiosity, creativity, open dialogue and active listening. I started my professional life as a musician, playing both classical clarinet and jazz saxophone .  Since high school, I have worked both as a performing musician and teacher, and later on, as a leader or project manager. For long I have been specially interested in continuously developing my leaderships skills, and applying them to the various tasks I have been engaged in pedagogic and artistic projects, as well as in management and administration.

Besides the performing career and different academic leadership positions I have also been doing consultative work for private and public organizations about creative leadership, using a live jazz band performance as a model. Now, part of my work is to enhance the students working life and entrepreneurship skills.

After having worked as Vice-rector of the Sibelius Academy and led its jazz program, I was for five years, the Rector (President) of the new University of the Arts Helsinki, which was a professional challenge and a fantastic opportunity to work towards making the world a better place by strengthening the role of Arts & Humanities in education and research.

I have also been working with international initiatives and projects for a long time. As an example, while working as the Head of the Jazz Program we started a new music master program in Global Music, together with the Royal Conservatory in Aarhus Denmark. The purpose for this new program and its curriculum was to make it possible for students from any musical tradition as background to be able to get in university level music performance and pedagogic studies. This program has been really attractive and succesful and greatly enhanced the cultural diversity of the Uniarts’ Sibelius Academy’s music studies. 

As just another example, I have been chairing the Board of the International Association of Schools of Jazz since 2012. IASJ is a global organization with ca. 80 member institutions from 30 countries (iasj.com). 

I strongly believe in the power of Arts and artistic thinking in developing the humanity’s understanding of what we are as people. I have also maintained a strong desire for inspiring leadership and have a good record of team-building and enabling people to achieve their fullest potential in collaboration with others. I am very much motivated to work towards strengthening the role of Arts, enhancing creativity and helping to build an even more inspiring learning and research community.