Music and Theatre Making In Canadian Prisons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Maki
Keyword(s):  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Devised Theatre ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Collaborative Music ◽  
Theatre Programs ◽  
Healthy Community

The benefits of engaging in theatre- and music-making have been well proven for various populations. (see Črnčec et al. 2006; Lehmberg and Fung 2010; Salur et al 2017, etc.) These benefits are particularly significant for individuals who have experienced trauma, especially incarcerated individuals. (see Kyprianides and Easterbrook 2020; Reid 2019, etc). Music and theatre programs vary in Canada, and are present in many Canadian prisons. In this paper, I examine two programs more closely: the grass roots program Pros and Cons at The Joyceville Institution in Kingston, Ontario, which involves a collaboration between volunteer musicians and a group of incarcerated men, and Diane Conrad’s work with a young offender’s facility in Alberta Canada, where she employed devised theatre techniques to create meaningful theatrical pieces within the prison’s walls. Both these programs are working towards a similar goal: preparing the incarcerated individuals to return to society through practicing and rehearsing healthy community and citizenship through collaborative music and theatre. While this is an admirable goal for this work, the conversation surrounding music and theatrical work in prisons has been focused on its rehabilitative aims and properties. In this presentation I will explore the features of both programs, examine the rehabilitation goals and the focus on rehabilitation in the literature on prison-based music and theatre programs, and discuss ways that Transformative Justice and the Abolitionist movement can be supported through these arts-based initiatives. 

Crowdsourcing the Corpus: Using Collective Intelligence as a Method for Composition

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 25-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plans Casal
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Spectral Decomposition ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Collaborative Practice ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Music Making ◽  
On Line ◽  
Collaborative Music

The author describes the practical application of crowdsourcing human intelligence as a form of collaborative music-making. Spectral decomposition of an original recording is used to derive components from original audio, and these are then offered as on-line tasks in which contributors are asked to record their own interpretations of each component. Components are then gathered in order to re-synthesize the original corpus, which is used to build an improvisation system. The author uses Bernard Stiegler's ecology of attention paradigm to situate crowdsourcing as an emerging form of public participation in music-making and Glenn Gould's ideas on performance and public access to position this participation as an act of composition. The work is offered as an illustration of the author's individual process as a composer for finding new notational pathways for collaborative practice.

The London Committee and mobilization of public opinion against the slave trade

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Political Life ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Late Eighteenth

AbstractDuring the late eighteenth century organized anti-slavery, in the shape of the campaign to end the African slave trade (1787–1807), became an unavoidable feature of political life in Britain. Drawing on previously unpublished material in the Josiah Wedgwood Papers, the following article seeks to reassess this campaign and, in particular, the part played in it by the (London) Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. So far from being a low-level lobby, as historians like Seymour Drescher have suggested, it is argued here that the Committee's activities, both in terms of opinion-building and arranging for petitions to be sent to the house of commons, were central to the success of the early abolitionist movement. Thus while the provinces and public opinion at the grass roots level were undoubtedly important, not least in the industrial north, it was the metropolis and the London Committee which gave political shape and significance to popular abolitionism.

scholarly journals Musical Totem: A Collaborative Composition Methodology During the Covid-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Collaborative Group ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Collaborative Working ◽  
Collaborative Music ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Exquisite Corpse

As part of the Action Research Network of the Americas, the Musical Learning Community is a collaborative group, founded during the COVID-19 global pandemic, that has brought together musicians, artists, and educators to generate shared experiences. As members of this community, we explore new ways for collaborative music-making. Through creative, cultural, and conceptual influences, the idea of the Musical Totem emerged as a collaborative music composition methodology to transcend geographical distancing. We sought interpretative freedom by adopting methods of the surrealist technique Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) while relying on the rich concept of totems to find thematic material and set compositional parameters. The process was carried out using arts-based and autoethnographic research approaches, which provided insights into our creative musical responses and remote collaborative working processes. This endeavor showed us that symbolism can provide compositional and performative challenges and that, as a methodology, the Musical Totem can create freedom and constraints depending on the musician, the conceptual influences, and the instrumentation. We also learned that engaging in a collaborative music-making process led to increased community bonding through shared creative expression.

Music Making on YouTube

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Cayari
Keyword(s):  
Small Groups ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Amateur Musicians ◽  
Musical Ensembles ◽  
Collaborative Music

People are making music at their leisure and publishing it online. YouTube has provided a space for musicians to publish multitrack music videos, join collective musical ensembles, and collaboratively perform with others. This chapter explores three trends of how musicians are creating music videos and forming virtual ensembles and music making communities: they are showing off their skills through music videos; they are creating videos to join large collective multitrack ensembles of hundreds or even thousands of others; and they are actively collaborating with small groups to create mediated performances. Collective and collaborative music making on the Internet are not only happening among grassroots amateur musicians, but also through educational and commercial institutions. Music making on the Internet allows for global interactions and collaboration, where people come together and enjoy music recreationally, unbound by time and space.

Auditory Imagination

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-104
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Schmicking
Keyword(s):  
Music Making ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Collaborative Music

Daniel Schmicking explores auditory imagination from a phenomenological perspective. He starts with an outline of phenomenological tools building mainly on Husserl’s thinking, and then sets out to analyze the structure of auditory imagination and its function in collaborative music-making. In his account of the workings of auditory imagination, Schmicking challenges the traditional Western notion of imagination as something private. A central part of Schmicking’s account of auditory imagination comprises a distinction between pure and weak forms of imagination, and this distinction is further used to explore how imagination contributes to other intentional forms, such as perception and memory.

Our Relationships Carry the Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (140) ◽  
pp. 186-196
Author(s):  
Laura McTighe
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Hiv Stigma ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Prison Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
Prison Health Care ◽  
Act Up

Abstract The radical HIV prison activist movement has always been, in practice, an abolitionist movement. Set in Philadelphia in the early 2000s, this article centers the relationships through which leaders of ACT UP Philadelphia, the Philadelphia County Coalition for Prison Health Care, TEACH Outside, and Project UNSHACKLE worked to transform the social conditions for which prisons have been posited as the solution and to create a prison-free future in real time. Its pages unfold a three-part methodological toolkit for HIV prevention justice. First, harm reduction demands that one show up and provide relief, no questions asked. Second, mutual aid grounds the forging of new social relations that are more survivable than those produced by HIV stigma, mass criminalization, and organized abandonment. Third, transformative justice offers both a vision and a practice for challenging criminalization in all its intimate, communal, and structural forms, and building a racially just and strategic HIV movement.

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