Community music therapy projects between musicians living with severe disabilities and adolescent music students

Abstract

Nadizumzum is a Hungarian orchestra founded in 2007. The members are adults living with severe disabilities, residents of a nursing home. These individuals often reported as an excluded minority; thus, positive personal encounters are highly important to facilitate their social inclusion. They are able to perform music with a novel method called Consonante.Mandatory community service is a part of the secondary-school curricula in Hungary. Instead of a social project, which frequently leads to unequal relationships, we wanted to build a musical community based on equality, mutuality, and common shared passion for music. The first project was a common performance with 9th grade students of Zoltan Kodaly Hungarian Choir School in 2014, and a flash-mob in 2015. The projects served as a positive model of inclusive community both for the participants and for the audience.Reflecting on the experience in the light of the literature of community music therapy (CoMT) and of research on the millennial generation we ...