Community Music Project Research Articles

The pedagogical–artistic strategies of community music facilitators as an inspiration for formal music education: A single case study

In this article, we elaborate on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of a community music project and how they may inspire formal music educational practices. To do so, we draw on findings from a study on the pedagogical–artistic strategies of the musicians–coaches of The Ostend Street Orchestra (TOSO), a community music project that started as an artistic response towards the commotion around a group of homeless people in the coastal town of Ostend, Belgium. The pedagogical–artistic strategies adopted by the TOSO coaches foster the emergence of an educational approach that may have the potential to enrich music educational practices by creating a learning environment that is more democratic and inclusive. Data collection included in-depth semi-structured interviews with the TOSO coaches in 2017 and 2021, as well as video-stimulated recall. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis. Seven themes emerged from our analysis: embodied interaction, co-coaching, re-thinking musical parameters, personal musical skills, collaboration, collective experiential learning and inclusion. We present the framework and rationale of the study, describe the pedagogical–artistic strategies of the coaches, and discuss the results. In conclusion, we briefly consider possibilities for further research and music teacher education.

Developing community music in Italy: The journey

This article deals with the relationship between community music and scholarly research within the context of Italian community life, cultural politics, conditions and history. Community music theory and practice activities provide participants with opportunities for growth, development and collaboration, ranging from specific musical skills to social and cultural outreach and the positive challenge of increasing self-awareness and empowerment. After discussing the links between community music projects and social work, music therapy or arts education, the article locates community music in the landscape of Italian music research and, especially, musicology. It summarizes the current state of community music and the efforts to create an Italian network of community music scholars as well as establish a dialogue with similar international networks. The aim is to create the conditions for the establishment of an academic and theoretical framework for community music in Italy that can work as a pathway between music for social change, musicology and music education.

The many ways of Puerto Rican community music

For several decades, scholars in the field of community music have largely concentrated on community music practices in the Global North. Such interest has not been as prevalent in certain parts of the world, like the Caribbean. Consequently, this qualitative multiple case study focuses on three Puerto Rican community music initiatives that foster the country’s indigenous music: Bomba, Plena, and Música Campesina. Scholars have documented the evolution and characteristics of these musical traditions. In contrast, this article centers around the practices of Taller Tambuyé, a female-led Bomba organization, Decimanía, a national Música Campesina initiative that funds other community music projects, and La Junta, a community-based project tied to the sector of El Machuchal in the capital of Puerto Rico. This paper presents and analyzes their practices through the lens of Australia’s Sound Links project and its nine domains of community music. The multiple case study methodology’s cross-case analysis revealed notable divergences among the projects in terms of learning practices, promotion of the indigenous music tradition, and the connection between the musical initiative and their community. Additionally, researchers found the framework established by Sound Links to be a comprehensive tool to analyze community music practices outside of Australia.

Moving in musicking: the evolving pedagogical practice of the artist-facilitator within asylum seeker centers.

The field of community music has been continuously expanding during the last years alongside the need for experienced musicians who can carry out music activities for culturally diverse groups. Based on previous studies, we identified a need for research-based practices for training musicians and music teachers who wish to facilitate community music projects. We believe that it is important to incorporate reflexive practice in order to inform the planning of the workshops, but also to support the needs of the participants. The article examines the evolution of the pedagogical practice of the artist-facilitator in active music making with children, during a series of movement-based musical workshops at an asylum seeker center in Netherlands. We used an exploratory case study integrating Action Research, in order to focus on the artist-facilitator's pedagogical practice, the participatory role of the children and the content of this type of workshops. The researchers describe the adopted pedagogical approach based on a set of guiding principles and key components that supported the design and content of the workshops. Based on a cyclical process (plan-act-observe-evaluate), the findings from every cycle were incorporated in the next one by analyzing the video footage of the workshops and the immediate reflections of the artist-facilitator. Data analysis revealed a set of recurring themes that reflect crucial aspects of the artist-facilitator's practice. Furthermore, a set of pedagogical implications are proposed that can be directly implemented within the practice of artists-facilitators who wish to engage in activities with children at asylum seeker centers.

Working musically with care-experienced children and their families in the early years

AbstractLiving within state care can have detrimental effects on children’s development, as substantial research has proposed. Recognising how music-making may support children’s social, emotional and personal development, many cultural organisations have begun developing music projects that work specifically with care-experienced children. Although evaluation has detailed the various benefits these projects may have, there has been little research into the approaches employed by the facilitators who deliver these projects. With this in mind, this article examines a community music project that focused on foster family music-making. It explores the facilitators’ social pedagogical approach to music-making and the benefits participants report they have gained from the project, both to themselves and the children in their care.

Reflective writing in a community music project with students in higher music education

Meet4Music (M4M) is a low-threshold community music program based at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria, offering free participatory sessions to people from all social and cultural backgrounds, including students. The program allows attendees to experience an emerging field of music pedagogy and approach current challenges of migration and cultural diversity from an artistic perspective. The purpose of this study was to explore how students considered and reflected on their M4M experiences. Research questions included the following: (1) How did students consider the experience of making music in a heterogeneous ensemble, and what meanings might they have made from it? And, (2) What aspects of M4M may have contributed to artistic and interpersonal enrichment, and in what ways? We examined meanings developed across the various practices involved in this artistic initiative, with a specific focus on the students’ experiences. To do so, qualitative data based on their written reflections are presented, analyzed, and discussed. Findings include attributions for M4M and personal impact. Themes center on a holistic understanding of the musical community of the program and students’ reflexive and responsive attitudes. Implications include refining notions of artistic citizenship and recommendations for higher music education.

The COVID carnival: Coping and recovering from the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic

Masamba Samba School is an Irish community music collective, working with disadvantaged communities through percussion and dance. This report looks at how an Irish community music project, Masamba Samba School, reacted to the demands of COVID-19 across a number of arenas – rehearsal, performance, teaching and research. By casting the virus as an uninvited stakeholder in our projects, we began to investigate what the ‘needs’ of the virus were, and whether we could accommodate them and still deliver meaningful work with our clients. Masamba Samba School’s story is somewhat unique in that it continued to operate throughout the lockdowns, first by concentrating on online and offline activities, and then by slowly moving back into the ‘in-person’ teaching space. This article begins with a brief description of how our projects operated pre-COVID-19 and then describes the immediate response to the pandemic (largely a shut-down), recounting how COVID-19 affected school operations in different ways, detailing the practical steps Masamba Samba School took to resume the teaching and research arms of its work and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of these strategies. The final section speculates about the future for the organization and whether Masamba Samba School can return to the way it was.

Structure, agency and community: Using online music gatherings to support social inclusion for people with disabilities in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Introduction In the wake of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns in the southern states of Australia, many community music and music therapy projects shifted to an online format. This paper discusses the formation and creation of four online music groups aimed at people with disability, including two groups for children and two for adults. The aim of the study was to explore the use of online technologies to support social inclusion and wellbeing when participants were physically isolated. Method This study positioned group participants as co-researchers to recognize the expertise many people with disability hold from being housebound or socially isolated. We adopted an action research framework in which participants provided ongoing reflections on the use of technology, access, musical foci and social interaction to iteratively develop the sessions through cycles of reflexive action. These data were triangulated with data collected through participant observation and individual interviews. Results The structured format of the sessions created online spaces for people with different disability, age and gender identities to explore their creativity together. Far from limiting participants’ autonomy and safety, the structured setting promoted their agency in decision-making and shaping the groups to meet their needs. Discussion Many participants interacted with the group or adapted to the online experiences in ways which the authors had not anticipated. While we were expecting our cohort to have expertise with social isolation, we found that they also had high levels of expertise as passionate musicians, which they used to frame the activities of the online gatherings.

Transforming embodied experiences of academic conferences through creative practice: Participating in an instant choir at the nordic geographers’ meeting in 2019

This paper stems from cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration between community music and human geography which sought to interrogate and understand claims of social sustainability and social change often cited in evaluation reports of community music projects. The lead authors (Parks and Cassidy) took this dialogue forward by organising a geography conference session which incorporated an instant choir workshop to test how we might ‘do’ social sustainability through practice. Drawing upon ideas from both disciplines, the paper synthesises the reflections of nine participants in the session to explore the capacity of creative, embodied, geographical practice to transform hegemonic experiences of academic conferences, and to create a sustainable and inclusive community of practice.

Projecto X: A Journey Inside Ourselves and What We Found When We Arrived

This article analyses and reflects upon a community music project that occurred in 2016 in Portugal. It involved a community of people with disabilities and a group of artists from different fields. The project’s promotors aimed to create a space in which differences were abated, social well-being was nourished and individual desires were fostered. This article endeavours to understand how artistic performance may provide opportunities for empowering less advantaged people and how it might have been achieved during this project. The reflections present in this article are based on the current literature on community music and are informed by other similar analysis of these kinds of projects. The article starts with a brief description of the project and then elaborates on the term ‘community music’ and its relationship to this project. The project made use of a mix between an art installation and an experimental instrument called Pianoscópio. This article describes this instrument in detail and analyses how it enabled the participants to express themselves to their fullest abilities. A characterisation of the participating community members follows, focusing on the core tenets of the association they were part of. After that, the article examines how the workshops took place and what transpired in the final performance, focusing specifically on the steps taken to accommodate the different disabilities of the participants. The article ends with a reflection upon these kinds of projects and the impact this one project might have had on its participants.

A Space for Collaborative Creativity. How Collective Improvising Shapes 'a Sense of Belonging'.

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept of eudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting).

Music for good: Reflections on a community music project through the lens of historical nostalgia

This study investigates a large-scale community project that called for a long preparation period and involved over a hundred participants. The researchers were interested in the contributory factors that led participants and leaders to commit and persevere with the project, for which there were almost two years of planning and five months of rehearsals. The project related a suppressed wartime history and had re-enactment aspects. Interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology was used to engage participants in sharing their lived experiences. Through focus group sessions, a theme of restoration emerged, among other themes that are frequently expressed in community music groups, such as social and emotional well-being. A deep emotional engagement with the project centred on historical restoration, which aligned with personal restoration experiences. Restoration was closely linked to storytelling and three other themes of personal growth, connections and self-discovery/journey. In light of this theme and the historical basis for the community project, the researchers chose to examine the findings through the lens of historical nostalgia.

Communication, identity, respect: a case study of collaborative music practice in a community music project

ABSTRACT This study is a qualitative insider-researcher investigation into aspects of social development that emerged through collaborative music practice with young people aged 16–25. The work took place in the Welsh capital, Cardiff, as part of a UK-national funded project facilitated by a major radio station. The data includes observations of rehearsals and other group activities both during, before and after musical practice; video recordings of performances; and interviews with 5 of the 30 participants and 3 of the 4 staff members. The major points discussed concern three over-arching concepts: ‘communication’, ‘musical identity’ and ‘respect’. Using theory from sources concerning group dynamics and collaborative musical practice: ‘communication’ is considered in relation to ways of communicating both about, and through the act of music-making itself; ‘identity’ refers to the role of music in forming our self-identities and the ways in which we present our identities to others; and ‘respect’ is considered from a range of perspectives such as the importance of friendship, as well as being coloured by the foregoing discussions of communication and identity. The article is aimed toward using music as a vehicle for enabling growth, development and engagement, and to bridge certain social transitional gaps.

Social pedagogy, music making and adopted children

Social pedagogy has become a common feature of CPD training for staff working with looked after children and adopted children. Social workers, foster carers and adoptive parents use the characteristic features of social pedagogical practice to develop meaningful relationships with a young person in care. Creative elements such as music have been noted to be useful activities in which both parties (children and support worker) can share a common interest and partake within a joint activity. This article sets out to examine the way in which a community music project working with adopted children and their adoptive parents uses social pedagogy and the impact that this may have on the participants. A case study strategy is used to examine the Loud and Clear adoption family learning project at Sage Gateshead, through which a multi-methodological approach was used, including interviews and participatory action research to gather participants’ and facilitators’ narratives of the impacts the sessions and approaches were having. Furthermore, participatory observations were also undertaken to see at first hand the social pedagogical approaches that the facilitators were using within sessions. Findings from the study indicated that having the opportunity to participate in a joint musical activity was key to helping children and adoptive parents develop their attachments to one another. Similarly, through facilitators providing opportunities for the group to socialise, adoptive parents were able to develop a support network that they felt would have been lacking within their lives. Both of these findings indicate the impact of adopting the common third approach to music making.

Making music in divided cities: Transforming the ethnoscape

AbstractIn the phenomenon of the divided city – urban environments partitioned along ethno-religious lines as a result of war or conflict – projects seeking to bring segregated people together through community music activities face many operational and psychological obstacles. Divided cities are politically sustained, institutionally consolidated, and relentlessly territorialized by competing ethno-nationalist actors. They are highly resistant to peacebuilding efforts at the state level. This article uses an urban peacebuilding lens (peacebuilding reconceptualized at the urban scale that encompasses the spatial and social dimensions of ethno-nationalist division) to examine the work of community music projects in three divided cities. Through the examples of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Mitrovica Rock School in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and Breaking Barriers (a pseudonym) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we consider the context-specific practices and discourses that are deployed to navigate the local constraints on inter-communal cooperation, but that also contribute to the broader goal of building peace. We find that music-making is a promising strategy of peacebuilding at the urban scale, with both functional and symbolic contributions to make to the task of transforming an ethnoscape into a peacescape.

The Blooming of Forgetting: Deep Play as a Focus for Improvisation in Community Music

The Blooming of Forgetting is a report on two community music projects grounded in improvisation and deep listening that took place in Melbourne, Australia, in 2016: combining personal reflection and theorising, an attempt is made to analyse what occurs "on the ground" in community music improvisation; what resonances for ideas of community ontology might arise, and why "deep play" could be an ideal zone for such projects to aim towards.

An Intergenerational Singing Group: A Community Music Therapy Qualitative Research Project and Graduate Student Mentoring Initiative

This study describes the implementation and investigation of a community music therapy (CoMT) intergenerational singing group. Participants were a non-clinical group of adults aged 20 to 65 years old. Weekly sessions were held over a 10-week period at a community art studio in a lower-income neighborhood within a large Canadian urban city. Participants reported experiencing increased self-expression, a sense of accomplishment, improved respiration, and feelings of general well-being. They developed new relationships and social and community networks, however participants mentioned limitations regarding the sustainability of this community development. They also indicated challenges with the multilingual repertoire. Three professional music therapy graduate students, acting as co-researchers, were introduced to and mentored in implementing community music therapy practice and research. Potential implications and recommendations for further research are discussed.

Diverse parenting goals and community music in early childhood

Abstract My aim in this article is to look at how one aspect of English policy converts into practice in a community music project designed for under-3-year-olds with their mothers. The study that informs the discussion in this article takes a case study approach, focusing on one musician and the once-weekly music sessions that he provided for a group of Somali-born mothers and their children. The article explores how neoliberal policies have resulted in early childhood music work in the community framed by an interventionist agenda; however, in the case that is the focus of this article, we will see how the use of music as parenting intervention failed. I suggest why this might be so, explaining how diverse parenting goals result in varying parenting practices. Finally, I suggest a return to a ‘critical’ community music aligned more with the original aims of the community music movement in the United Kingdom.

Addressing new challenges for a community music project in the context of higher music education: A conceptual framework

In response to Europe's societal challenges, such as current issues about migration, the Institute of Music Education at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz established Meet4Music (M4M), a low-threshold community music project. M4M is open to individuals from all sociocultural and musical backgrounds and ages, and provides them with the opportunity to socialize with others and to express themselves musically. M4M is based on collaborative learning in an open community ensemble, which includes choir, dance, theatre and percussion, alternating with one another on a weekly basis. University students can choose M4M as an elective course to gain relevant experience in leading heterogeneous and intercultural ensembles. The aim of this paper is to present this project, with a special focus on its dimensions, aims and pedagogical implications for educating reflective teachers. A conceptual framework that contributes to the concept of lifelong learning in (higher) music education will be provided, and foundations for further research and theory will be offered.

Community of difference: The liminal spaces of the Bingodisiac Orchestra

Abstract The Bingodisiac Orchestra, a nomadic improvised community music project without fixed membership, is explored in this article as a case study examining the ‘open participatory’ aspects of Do-it-Yourself (DiY) sound culture. Established by the researcher in 2002, the ‘orchestra’ is an audio-visual event that attempts to break down barriers between diverse musical forms while also engaging in various strategies to maximize the interaction between audience and performer. In doing so, Stephen Duncombe’s idea of the ‘community of difference’ is employed, whereby the orchestra becomes a practice that embodies a de-centralized approach to both social organization and the organization of sound. Other concepts discussed in this article include the ‘fairground effect’, a strategy of the Bingodisiac Orchestra to de-centralize the production of sound through the use of liminal spaces traditionally ignored in music performance: creating a more participatory space for the performance, which allows different styles of music to be simultaneously and spontaneously incorporated into the performance. In this way, liminal space and the ‘community of difference’ are identified as being a part of the process of creating musical communities that encourage improvised music that is ‘free’ of any particular style: altering the focus of musicians from the need to find a common ground as a basis for their sound improvisations, while also enabling the temporary construction of a community sound experience.