scholarly journals Making music in divided cities: Transforming the ethnoscape

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Howell ◽  
Lesley Pruitt ◽  
Laura Hassler
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
State Level ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Local Constraints ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
Music Centre ◽  
Context Specific

In 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.

scholarly journals Emotion Curves: Creativity and Methodological “Fit” or “Commensurability”

2021 ◽  
pp. 194084472110027
Author(s):  
Jim Donaghey ◽  
Fiona Magowan
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Movement Training ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Innovative Methodology ◽  
Participatory Music

The “emotion curve” is a creative methodology that asks research participants to express in graphic form changes in their emotional responses over time, reflecting on a given time period or on a particular activity or event (in our case, music-based activities). This methodology was developed as part of our research with community music-making NGO Musicians Without Borders at their “Music Bridge” participatory music and movement training program in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. This article discusses how the “post-conflict” context of our research, and our engagement with the principles of prefiguration and participatory action research, shaped the development of this innovative methodology, paying particular attention to achieving methodological “fit” (or commensurability) with the practices, objectives, and ethos of our research partners. This creative and “fitting” (or commensurate) methodology has been the basis of a “mutually transformative dialog” with our research partners.

Community Service Learning with First Peoples

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet ◽  
Dawn Bennett ◽  
Anne Power ◽  
Naomi Sunderland
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Culturally Appropriate ◽  
Community Service Learning ◽  
Intercultural Learning ◽  
Music Making ◽  
First Peoples

Community music educators worldwide face the challenge of preparing their students for working in increasingly diverse cultural contexts. These diverse contexts require distinctive approaches to community music-making that are respectful of, and responsive to, the customs and traditions of that cultural setting. The challenge for community music educators then becomes finding pedagogical approaches and strategies that both facilitate these sorts of intercultural learning experiences for their students and that engage with communities in culturally appropriate ways. This chapter unpacks these challenges and possibilities, and explores how the pedagogical strategy of community service learning can facilitate these sorts of dynamic intercultural learning opportunities. Specifically, it focuses on engaging with Australian First Peoples, and draws on eight years of community service learning in this field to inform the insights shared.

scholarly journals Working With and Within Chaos

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Brenda Oosthuizen
Keyword(s):  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Music Therapy ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Music Therapist ◽  
Support Programme ◽  
Group Music Therapy ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Valuable Complement ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
First Time

The Support Programme for Abuse Reactive Children, was initiated by the Teddy Bear Clinic (an NPO established to protect abused children) in South Africa in response to the increase of child-on-child offenders in this country.  This short-term programme aims to offer holistic rehabilitation to first time young sex offenders and incorporates conventional diversion approaches alongside creative programmes, including group music therapy. Based on a review of my session notes, this paper considers challenges and positive developments I experienced over time as the programme’s music therapist from 2006 to 2016. Although I often experienced this work as chaotic, findings suggest that through co-creating a context-specific music therapy programme alongside group members, clinic staff and the broader community, music therapy has offered an increasingly relevant and valuable complement to the diversion programme. Continuing challenges within this work are also highlighted.

Distributed Participatory Design: The challenges of designing with physically disabled musicians during a global pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-229
Author(s):  
Franziska Schroeder ◽  
Alex Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
Banking Services ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Impact

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been an extraordinary situation. Social distancing has impacted the vast majority of people, reorganising society, physically separating us from friends, family and colleagues. Collectively we found ourselves in a distributed state, reliant upon digital technologies to maintain social and professional connections. Some activities can translate unabated to a digital medium, with benefits, such as the convenience inherent in many online shopping and banking services. Other activities, particularly those which are socially engaged, including inclusive music-making or design, may need to be re-framed and re-thought due to the absence of in-person contact.In Northern Ireland, the Performance Without Barriers (PwB) research group works with disabled artists from the Drake Music Project Northern Ireland (DMNI) to identify ways in which technology can remove access barriers to music-making. Since disabled people are experts in their unique lived experience of disability, they must be involved in the design process, an approach known as participatory design. At the end of 2020, many of us are still adjusting to the new normal, only beginning to understand the impact of distributed digital living. In this article, we examine how the socially engaged work of PwB has been affected, changed and adapted during the pandemic throughout 2019 to 2020, expanding ideas of distributed creativity to the notion of distributed design. The authors formalise the concept of socially engaged distributed participatory design, an approach that classifies PwB’s current research activities in the area of accessible music technology design and improvised musicking. Consideration is given to the impact the notion of ‘distribution’ has on degrees of participation.

Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Mac Ginty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
State Level ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Pros And Cons

This chapter looks at the pros and cons of peace formation in Northern Ireland; a case where many would suppose that international, elite-level, and social claims had moved close together during the peace process, having been at least partly reconciled mainly by various international and state-level initiatives. This translates as a form of oligarchy between domestic political parties and the British and Irish governments which did its best to stage-manage popular input. Indeed, the agency of local actors was encouraged when deemed useful but was ignored if it fell outside of the intentions of the elite peace oligarchy unless it threatened a reversion to violence. At the same time, however, party politics managed to channel popular support into the peace process, even as popular legitimacy for the outcomes of this process was waning. The chapter argues that this level of peace process — elite negotiations and party politics — has not brought about reconciliation.

Commentary: Music in the Community

2012 ◽  
pp. 98-103
Author(s):  
David J. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The People ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

This article presents an overview of Section 2 of the Oxford Handbook of Music Education, Volume 2. It considers John Dewey's (1927) thoughts on the relationship between the “goods” (values, benefits) of some kind of activity and the nature of “community.” It argues that it is highly unlikely that there will never be a fixed concept or “how-to” of community music. For however and wherever community music is conceived and practiced, this elusive phenomenon continues to evolve and diversify locally and internationally to meet the changing needs of the people it serves today and those it will serve tomorrow. It reinvents itself continuously in relation to the musics and technologies its practitioners and clients desire and appropriate; and, of course, community music matures constantly as community music facilitators deploy their creativity to reframe, adjust, combine, integrate, and overlap existing ways of empowering people to make music for the realization of its many “goods” and the many ways that music making, musical sharing, and musical caring creates “community.”

scholarly journals Community-Based Referential Music Making with Limited-Resource Adolescents: A Pilot Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Natasha Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Music Therapy ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Limited Resource ◽  
African American Adolescents ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Community Group ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Referential Music

Abstract Black/African American adolescents from limited-resource communities face challenges and circumstances that are unique to their racialization and socioeconomic status; this merits community-engaged resources, such as community music therapy, that are equally unique in creating culturally responsive opportunities for limited-resource adolescents to engage socially with peers and experience meaningful success in a safe, supportive environment. The purpose of this study was to pilot and explore the feasibility of and behavioral processes in a community-based referential music-making intervention for limited-resource adolescents labeled as “at-risk.” The methods consisted of a concurrent nested (embedded) mixed methods design based on the principles of participatory actions research (PAR), during which qualitative data were collected during 8 focus group style music-making sessions. Quantitative data assessing self-efficacy were collected prior to first and following the 8th music-making session. The validity of quantitative results was challenged by the lowered reading level of participants and a high amount of mis-labeled (and thus unusable) data. Qualitative data suggest 3 themes, including creating community, artistic prioritization, and pride. All results were impacted by issues, such as inconsistent attendance and malfunctioning recording equipment. Nevertheless, participants expressed a collective desire to share their work with their community group. Discussion points are raised including how participants in this community music therapy-based approach were able to create and direct their own stories. The implementation of community music therapy approaches seems a valuable way to bring authentic representations of limited-resource adolescent participants into clinical practice.

scholarly journals Community Music Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Howell ◽  
Lee Higgins ◽  
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet
Keyword(s):  
Health Economic ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Community Music ◽  
Music Practice ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Musical Excellence

Many people have become disengaged from music making owing to the commercialization and commodification of music practices. This chapter examines a distinctive response to that disengagement, through the work of community music facilitators, who connect on interpersonal and musical levels to encourage community music practice. Four case studies are used to illustrate the central notions of this approach. Underpinning these four case studies is the concept of musical excellence in community music interventions. This notion of excellence refers to the quality of the social experience—bonds formed, meaning and enjoyment derived, and sense of agency that emerges for individuals and the group—alongside the musical outcomes created through the music making experience. The chapter concludes by considering the ways in which community music opens up new pathways for reflecting on, enacting, and developing approaches that respond to a wide range of social, cultural, health, economic, and political contexts.

scholarly journals Modeling Social Dimensions of Oral Health Among Older Adults in Urban Environments

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 63S-73S ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara S. Metcalf ◽  
Mary E. Northridge ◽  
Michael J. Widener ◽  
Bibhas Chakraborty ◽  
Stephen E. Marshall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Oral Health ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Social Dimensions
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