‘Becoming the song’: Alice Parker, community singing and unlearning choral strictures

This article conveys research about participatory community singing that I explore through various lenses. I present thoughts and reflections from my interview with Alice Parker, who has many years of experience leading community singing events as well as ethnographic data collected from a monthly community singing event in the American Midwest. I analyse these data through the lens of a ‘traditional’ choral conductor who, prior to undertaking this investigation, had little knowledge about participatory singing traditions; I also utilize scholarship on the differences between participatory and performative music activities. In our interview, Ms Parker drew on many years of experience in both areas to provide touchstones for facilitating community singing events and also the distinct differences between these events and more traditional choral settings. Perhaps in reflecting on this dichotomy, facilitators of these two important forms of music making might learn from one another.

‘We are still here’: The impacts of street music and street art during the 2020 London lockdowns

This article summarises the impacts of a spontaneous arts initiative involving the residents of eight London streets during the 2020 lockdowns. A local arts organization devised small-scale, informal street music projects that were evaluated by the residents themselves. Responses suggested that such events had a strong positive impact on the feelings of community. Common responses included reaffirming the importance of local cohesion, recognizing music as an accessible means of developing new connections in ‘distanced’ conditions and a new appreciation of family togetherness. Those involved suggested that researchers could learn much about the characteristics of cohesive, supportive communities from similar initiatives. The project confirmed that more research was needed on the role schools could play in bringing communities together and how music can be used to build bridges between school and community. Feedback raised questions about the absence of children’s voices in post-COVID-19 planning for ‘the recovery curriculum’.

Music facilitation for promoting well being through the lifecourse

A growing body of research is concerned with how lifelong music learning and participation in community contexts may support well being and quality of life. Research focused on how non-formal community music learning and participation can be supported and facilitated is more limited. This article sets out three case study examples of the ways in which facilitators of music learning in diverse community contexts (including the home) can be supported and trained. Following these examples, a model for music facilitation is presented and discussed, highlighting key tools for supporting active music-making across the lifecourse.

The magnificent territory: Pausing to reflect on a lifetime of working with people and music

In this biographical account of a musical lifecourse, I highlight the psychosocial, vocational, functional and affective meaning of music. Using my own musical journey as an illustrative example, I draw attention to the ways in which music can be a catalyst for understanding of the self, for meaning-making in the world and for developing understandings of one’s role in that world. My overarching message is that a musical lifecourse can frame our deepest relationships and most significant moments of profound joy.

Researching the musical lifecourse in music therapy, community music and music education: Unique roles, convergences and blurring of philosophies and practices

This article presents a diversity of approaches and a heterogeneity of research methods used, where the aim is to contribute to understandings of how musical engagement across the lifecourse may foster health and well being. Multiple perspectives and methodological approaches located in the disciplines of music therapy, community music and music education will be described, including identifying affordances and constraints associated with documenting lifelong and lifewide musical pathways. The research presented examines how lifelong musical engagement in different contexts might contribute to health and well being for different populations. The authors describe and situate their disciplines, present different methodological approaches that might contribute to lifecourse research in music and provide examples of particular projects.

Sistema-inspired music education as an agent of change in and beyond the musical lifecourse: Perceptions of the transferable skills and transferability

Within Sistema-inspired music education initiatives, claims have been made relating to the ways in which these experiences may contribute to the musical lifecourse, having lifewide and lifelong implications for young people. For example, a commonly held aspiration amongst Sistema-inspired programmes around the world is to foster participants’ well being, personal development and enhanced academic engagement. This article explores perceptions relating to the wider, transferable competencies derived from participation in one such programme. The National Orchestra for All (NOFA), an inclusive youth orchestra residential programme targeting under-served young people who face diverse barriers to musical participation, seeks to function as an ‘agent of change’ within participants’ lives. NOFA aims to improve the life chances of the young participants using music as means to support the development of personal, social and citizenship skills, their objective being to equip young people for achieving their potential within education, work and community. Our aim in this article is to address whether, and how, a short-term residential orchestral programme is perceived to function as an agent of change in the areas of personal, social or citizenship skills, and whether those skills are thought to be transferable beyond the programme context. Drawing on interviews and focus groups carried out over the course of three years, we present a thematic analysis representing participant perceptions. Overall, a number of transferable ‘life skills’ emerged. However, while some participants indicated that their experiences in NOFA did have an influence that transferred beyond the programme itself, others described persistent challenges that remained outside of the influence of any new skills or competencies gained within NOFA. These findings have implications for developing nuanced understandings of the role that intensive, inclusive orchestra programmes may have in nurturing transferable competencies and wider benefits in the lives of their participants.

Promoting a musical lifecourse towards sustainable ageing: A call for policy congruence

Today, individually perceived quality of life for a growing ageing population could be said to be significantly dependent on meaningful life experiences, social connectedness and a sense of purpose. In this article, we argue for a wider theorization of policy and the politics of ageing. The central aim is to reflect on understandings of ageing within music education and musical participation, and, in particular, shift the focus from active ageing ‐ and the ways it might support the narrow agenda of music for older adults ‐ to the potentials of holistic and sustainable learning and participation in music. To do so, we draw from the concept of policy congruence, presenting a vision of policy as a critical catalyst that may amplify parameters for concerted initiatives among multiple constituencies within music education. We argue these amplified parameters may afford renewed efforts towards transdisciplinary action that can support the actions of community musicians and strengthen their role as networked actors labouring in consonance with others in the growingly significant areas of lifelong learning and ageing populations. Our stance is that, if we can assume that music education and musical participation have a serious contribution to make in the lives and well being of individuals across the lifespan, including older adults, then we ought to consider how systematic policy engagement may actively contribute to appropriate allocation of resources and renewed pedagogical and organizational framings, which more directly use lifelong learning to support sustainable ageing.

Generating meaningfulness through lifelong and life-wide leisure engagement with music

The authors in this article each bring a particular insight to the overarching question of how pedagogical and facilitation approaches can deepen and strengthen a lifelong value attached to music learning and engagement in leisure music activities. It is argued that when learner voice is privileged and social connections are embedded in pedagogical approaches early on, for example in formal school music or extracurricular youth learning contexts, this will likely underpin lifelong habits of engagement in valued, meaningful leisure activity. A lifelong learning mindset, oriented around serious leisure, can in turn promote the quality of later life, when a potential sense of loss related to personal work and family identity can be profound.

Community music interventions, popular music education and eudaimonia

The fields of community music and popular music education have expanded rapidly over the past few decades. While there are many similarities between these two fields, there are aspects that set these two areas of practice apart. This article seeks to explore the intersections of community music interventions and popular music education to explain how they are similar and in which ways they are unique. This discussion centres on examinations of facilitation, ownership of music, training and certification, inclusivity, life-long music making, amateur engagement, informal learning and non-formal education, and social concerns. The Greek philosophy of eudaimonism, understood as ‘human flourishing’ is then used to explore the opportunities for human fulfilment through popular music education and community music approaches.