Girls Rock! Best Practices and Challenges in Collaborative Production at Rock Camp for Girls

Abstract

Rock Camp for Girls Montreal (RCFG) is a summer camp where girls aged 10-17 learn an instrument, form, band, and write and perform an original song. Based in a feminist mandate of empowerment, this camp seeks to foster greater inclusion of girls and young women in musical production. Mobilizing the concept of the community of practice (CoP), this chapter forwards a case study of RCFG through participation observation, examining this organization’s pedagogies and practices, and evaluating how conceptualizations of the CoP (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998, 2010) afford a lens to understand how RCFG seeks to widen access to male-dominated music scenes through collaboration. Highlighting challenges and successes at RCFG in fostering greater participation in cultural production, this chapter contrasts RCFG’s mode of collaborative production with individual-focused and male-dominated norms in the music industry. Making use of Wenger’s (1998) CoP characteristics of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire, this chapter defines RCFG as an alternative CoP in that its characteristics differ from normative practices in CoPs that may result in exclusion. While the RCFG model offers some potential in combatting barriers in entry to cultural production, this chapter concludes that collaborative modes of production alone cannot intervene in systemic barriers to entry to creative work or lack of equity in the creative industries writ large. REFERENCES Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.