For decades, participatory action research (PAR) was the preserve of social and educational studies, particularly in community or grassroots contexts. Today, however, it is emerging with growing strength in fields where it was previously only hinted at: cultural management, ethnomusicology, and even certain artistic spaces that, until recently, were considered impermeable to participatory approaches. This shift not only broadens research methods but also redefines the very relationship between knowledge, practice, and community.

In ethnomusicology, the figure of the researcher as an external observer has gradually eroded over time.

It is no longer enough to merely observe from the outside or describe the music of "the others"; instead, the focus is on building knowledge with them, sharing decisions, insights, and ways of doing. PAR provides a fertile framework for this transition: it transforms research into a shared space where music is not only analysed but also experienced as a collective and contested practice, even by those who generate it. From this perspective, the ways of documenting, interpreting, and disseminating musical expressions are also transformed.

Cultural management, for its part, has begun to embrace this momentum. Rather than relying on hierarchical or top-down models, projects are now being co-designed with the cultural communities themselves, who are recognised as co-authors of their own processes. In this context, PAR is not just a methodological tool but embodies an ethical approach to work. The role of the cultural manager shifts from that of a detached planner to that of a mediator who facilitates collective action, acknowledging that outcomes emerge from dialogue rather than design, and fostering exchange between academia and society.

Nevertheless, convergences between cultural management and ethnomusicology remain scarce, particularly when it comes to early or art music repertoires. Historically rooted in academic institutions and heritage recovery, this field has been more the domain of historical musicology than participatory research. Paradoxically, it is precisely in these spaces—where heritage reactivation practices take place—that there lies enormous potential for developing new participatory methodologies and research lines.

Imagine an approach to early music research that goes beyond mere reconstruction, instead fostering collaborative processes among performers, researchers, managers, and audiences from a more essential and material standpoint. This would frame interpretation as a form of cultural mediation and artistic creation, shaped and sustained by intersectoral phenomena and factors explained through the humanisation of the creators themselves—valuing their contexts, experiences, and idiosyncrasies. Early music would cease to be an object to be reconstructed, performed, observed, and evaluated, becoming instead a meeting place for a multitude of sensitivities, memories, practices, and knowledges, all traversed by contemporaneity.

There are still no consolidated lines of work in this direction, and that is precisely where the appeal of freely embarking on something new and meaningful lies. In my own research, I seek to identify the connections and shared goals among individuals and projects in the Iberian Peninsula that revolve around these processes of musical creation and heritage recovery. Their realities and experiences explain their actions and trends, and their capacity for agency is influenced by complex and changing—yet observable and systemic—contexts.

Perhaps this "something meaningful" lies in designing a specific way of seeing and acting for this reality, for this activity, for these people. If participatory action research has demonstrated its ability to transform realities in rural, educational, or community settings, why not imagine its potential in so-called "erudite" spaces as well? It may be that non-popular cultural expressions have been historically dehumanised to some extent, analysed through the figure of the artist and the least worldly concept of art, systematically distancing a more grounded and personal approach to these communities and their activities.

Perhaps the early music movement, with its delicate balances and diversity of realities and sensitivities, offers a uniquely fertile ground for experimenting with new forms of participatory research and management—where the needs of the involved community are heard, their requirements addressed, and they are made active participants in the process. Brushing against autoethnography while maintaining the necessary distance for objective analysis, all the while attempting to blur the barriers imposed by working from a position of "otherness," is a challenge—but a beautiful one. It is the very challenge posed by cooperative cultural observatories like Sonoscopia.