CAROLYN BLACKBURN

Promoting children’s well-being, right to make choices and engage in playful activities in restricted environments through music and singing

In an era where creative subjects are being squeezed in education, the role and value of the arts in health settings is increasingly highlighted. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW) (2017) and Fancourt (2017) highlight a wide range of possible ways in which the arts can support health and wellbeing of individuals, communities and societies in the context of contemporary models of health. This includes helping with specific identified conditions as well as promoting well-being, healthy behaviours and social engagement. Included in the broad definition of arts are singing and musical activities as well as performing arts such dance, drama, juggling and visual art such as painting and drawing. Associated with the concept of social prescribing (which seeks to address health and wellbeing from a holistic perspective using a range of non-clinical interventions), participatory arts projects are growing in number in the UK (APPGAHW, 2017).

More and more people now appreciate that arts and culture can play a valuable part in helping tackle some of the most challenging social and health conditions. Active participation in the visual and performing arts, music and dance can help people facing a lonely old age, depression or mental illness; it can help maintain levels of independence and curiosity and, let’s not forget, it can bring great joy and so improve the quality of life for those engaged. Lord Bichard of Nailsworth, 2016 cited in APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, 2017b: 47)

In relation to the benefits of participating in music and singing in health settings, the APPGAHW (2017) revealed that:

Participatory arts in children’s hospitals provide a pleasurable diversion from the anxiety of treatment and the boredom of long waiting times

In terms of children’s rights to engage in playful activities and make choices, the United Conventions on the Rights of the Child Article 31 states that “Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities” and Article 12 states that “Every child has the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters affecting them, and to have their views considered and taken seriously”. This right applies at all times, for example during immigration proceedings, housing decisions or the child’s day-to-day home life.

Given the evidence reported above, I have been working on a timely study funded by the Froebel Trust which focuses on one aspect of music and singing in healthcare settings; the benefits of musical games for children with a range of conditions at a Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH) in terms of their right to make choices, engage in playful activities and their overall wellbeing with Ex Cathedra’s Singing Medicine[1] project http://excathedra.co.uk/education-participation/singing-medicine/

Data collection involved interviews with parents (and wider family members) and health professionals as well as non-participant researcher observations of singing medicine sessions. For the interviews five parents, one sibling, one adult who had attended BCH as a child and thirteen health professionals were included. For the observations, six children were observed across three wards.

Themes that arose from interviews included:

The important characteristics of the Singing Medicine vocal tutors;
Contribution to children’s emotions;
Contribution to child/family experiences of hospital;
Contribution to children’s development and learning (including neurodevelopment);
Spiritual and moral dimensions;
Contribution to medical care (including contribution to the wellbeing of health professionals);
Contextual aspects of the service; and
Contribution to family life, patterns and structures.

The potential contribution to children’s neurodevelopment is an important finding since it was mentioned by participants that neurodevelopment is an aspect of healthcare provision often omitted, due to the understandable need to focus on acute care and patient survival and recovery.

From observations there was evidence of:

Choices for children;
Following children’s lead;
Facilitating medical care;
Building memorable moments for families; and
Focussing on children’s holistic development.

These findings demonstrate the benefit of participating in Singing Medicine for children, their family members and health professionals supporting them. The findings can be considered in light of significant evidence from the APPGAHW on the benefits of the arts more broadly and singing and music specifically in health settings, and also in light of the United Conventions on the Rights of the Child. The next phase of the study will be to map the findings against Froebelian principles.

You can read more about the study and find the final report (when it is published later in the Summer) here http://www.bcu.ac.uk/research/stories/childrens-wellbeing

There is a current petition for 'Singing on Prescription' to be adopted by the NHS https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/211288 please sign if you have time.

References:

APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (2017a) Policy Briefing Arts Engagement and Wellbeing July 2017 [Online http://www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry/ accessed 11.12.17]

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (2017b) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing [Online http://www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/ accessed 12.12.17]

Fancourt, D. (2017) Arts in Health, Designing and Researching Interventions. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Biography

Dr. Carolyn Blackburn is a Senior Research Fellow, School of Education and Social Work, Birmingham City University. Carolyn is Vice Chair of the European Association on Early Childhood Intervention, a Churchill Early Years Prevention and Intervention Fellow, a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, an Editorial Board Member of Infants and Young Children and a Disability Forum Council Member of the Royal Society of Medicine.

SHELLY COYNE

Biography

Shelly has been encouraging people to sing for as long as she can remember! It started with getting her sisters to do singing shows when they were just tiny and has never really stopped. She worked in Morecambe and Lancaster for years before going to Gateshead with Sing Up and finally to Scotland, setting up the community music charity Givin’ it Laldie. Her passion is connecting people and building community through song. The work that has had the most profound impact on her as a Community Musicians has been working in a prison, homeless day centre and with babies, young people and adults from areas of multiple deprivation. Shelly believe singing together can rebuild communities and rebuild people. She has designed and delivered a programme to train choir leaders to work effectively and ethically with vulnerable singers and is constantly questioning what it is that makes a great music leader.

She is currently an AHRC funded PhD student based in the Music Department at Edinburgh University, exploring the experience of singing in a choir or in a community singing group for singers experiencing homelessness. She conducted one study in Rio, during the Cultural Olympiad in 2016 travelling as an international With One Voice delegate and another with groups around the UK.

Shelly has just completed a National Review of Arts and Homelessness of Scotland for With One Voice, the first of its kind in the UK. The report will be publicly launched at the end of 2018.

This topic is important to me because…

The themes of excellence and inclusion have been like beacons for all my work and my research and can perhaps best be summed up by a packet of very tasty biscuits. I’ll explain. I was about to start a new job in Glasgow setting up Givin’ it Laldie, a community singing project in the Gorbals, an area of multiple deprivation, poverty, poor health social isolation and Sectarianism. I asked some wise colleagues who had many more years of experience over me if they could give me some advice and Gilly Love said when you have a choir rehearsal and you have your tea break ‘buy the best biscuits you can afford’! And this moto has stayed with me throughout my career. Too many people in society have been ignored and neglected and overlooked, given the left overs of the rest of society and in a cycle of expecting to be let down. When we are given the privilege of making music in these communities, only the best is acceptable. That equates to delivering the highest quality of music making experience, working with a well-trained music leader who has honed the many skills needed to do the work, using a decent instrument to accompany the choir, to finding the most comfortable room, light and warm and decent chairs – it means getting the best biscuits for the tea break. We let participants know that they are valued and they are wanted not by offering second best. This may be the only opportunity to make music together and let a person know they have a voice. I suppose to sum it up I’d say excellence brings inclusion. By delivering the very best quality music making experience, we make it open and inclusive.

My questions and themes...

The questions that ruminate in my head are the same things I’d like to explore at the network event. They relate to the world of community music and are,

When exploring making music with people who are vulnerable, what is the same, what is different to making music with other groups in the community. How does it compare to working with participants with mental health issues, those who are socially isolated, people living in poverty, those living with dementia, or musicians who have addictions?
Who should deliver this work, what training do they need, what is quality and excellence when it comes to music leaders and in particular choir leaders?

Lightening talk

If I had an opportunity to deliver a 2-minute lightening talk it would be a provocation.

So, you think you’re a good Community Musician – how? What are the skills and qualities you have developed for this work? I’d want to explore and challenge what makes a good music leader and an effective choir leader. I would draw on my own practise, those that I have worked with; the good and the not so good as well as people I have trained. This experience would be viewed through the lens of current research around community musicians and draw on the findings of my studies in Rio and the UK where participants were asked what are the skills and qualities needed to deliver this work. What does excellence look like in Community Musicians?

JO GIBSON

PhD Researcher at The International Centre for Community Music,

York St. John University

Jo Gibson is a PhD researcher at The International Centre for Community Music, York St John University, UK. Her research focuses on creative collaborative music making as undertaken in the music workshop, which she is exploring through a Practice as Research strategy. As a community musician she has led creative music making projects across the education sector, in criminal justice settings, community centres, health settings and for arts organisations including orchestras and museums.

Why is the topic of this event important to me?

On reflection, as a community musician much of my professional practice has been situated within an interventionist framework. By this I understand community music as a type of active intervention in which people are supported to participate in music - and often, (working within project funder remits) with the broad understanding that such participation will support participants in some way. But what does it mean to support, and work with and for participants? Is ‘support’ indicative of a kind of responsiveness to participants, an open-ended approach, a journey into the unknown? Or does it present a lack of clarity that is problematic? In short I want to better understand the work I do and its resulting meaning. And so…

I undertake PhD study as an opportunity to ‘re-search’ my practice (Sullivan & Gu, 2017) in terms of meaning, purpose, and most significantly how to better work with and for participants – how to really listen. I resonate with contemporary international approaches to community music that call for a rethinking of intervention from diverse cultural perspectives. For example, in discussion of intercultural work in Australia, music educators Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Gavin Carfoot highlight potential problematics of intervention as another colonising endeavour, whereby the non-indigenous outsider decides what is necessary for the indigenous community (2016). In this they present the question - intervention on whose terms? To what extent does intervention imply a deficit model? Is the role of the community musician that of intervener? Or does the ‘intervening’ occur through exchange between the community musician and participant, and if so what does this suggest for the community musician’s role and practice?

In highlighting the problematics of outsider status, I find a connection between such international perspectives and my experience as both community musician (and before that a participant) in music making projects in East London. Here, perhaps ‘indigenous’ might be replaced with ‘residents’ – whereby non-residents decide what is necessary for residents. Questions of whose music (and subsequently what is the role of the community musician in music making with participants – and what do approaches to practice tell us about the work) are pertinent for this situated practice.

Discussion interests and questions

The role of the community musician / music leader in socially engaged practice.
The interrelationship between participant(s) and community musician(s).

I am keen to explore questions arising from my practitioner-researcher music-making with child and vulnerable adult participants, such as

Whilst songwriting as sharing personal experience is perhaps to acknowledge notions of ‘authenticity’ in this musical practice, for what purpose, and on whose terms, are personal experiences shared in music interventions?
What impact might participant sharing of traumatic events through song have on others in the group?
What is the scope for open-ended processes in which outputs are led by the work?

2-minute lightening talk suggestion

A zoom in on situated practice – specifically on the processes of creating new music with participants and what might be understood from focussing reflections on material generation in music interventions.

I will draw on examples from my long-term PhD PaR settings Cable Street Songwriters, The Bad Bargain Band and Musication, and ask event attendees about their practice to open dialogue.

References

Bartleet, B., L. & Carfoot, G. (2016). Arts-based service learning with Indigenous communities: Engendering artistic citizenship. In Elliott, David J., Silverman, Marissa, & Bowman, Wayne D. (Eds.), Artistic Citizenship Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis (pp.339-358). New York: Oxford University Press.

Sullivan, G. & Gu, M. (2017). The Possibilities of Research – The Promise of Practice, Art Education, 70 (2), pp.49-57.

NELL FARRALLY

www.nellfarrally.co.uk

Why do I want to participate in MUSOC event?

I work as a freelance evaluator for arts and cultural organisations, specialising in music education and community music. I have recently completed a MSc in Social Research and Evaluation (University of Huddersfield). In October 2018, I shall start a PhD at Bath Spa University exploring evaluation methodologies in community music.

I want to connect with researchers and practitioners who are working in this field and join in the conversation. I’m sure that it will be beneficial to me, as I embark on a PhD, to hear different perspectives on the topic.

What would I like to contribute?

My evaluation and research work is quite varied (Music Education Hubs, Youth Arts organisations, large festivals and arts venues, small musician-led community music organisations) so I bring a perspective from many angles. I also work as a musician in Early Years settings. Most of my work is in the South West of England so I bring a perspective from the West Country.

Why is the topic of this event important to me?

Intervention isn’t a word I have ever used in my work. It’s not a term that the people and organisations I work with use. Inclusion and inclusivity – yes. I do talk about quality a lot – who’s ideas of quality, do project partners have a shared understanding of quality, how is quality judged? I think language is so important – and in music it too often reinforces a hierarchy of taste which excludes some people (sometimes intentionally and sometimes not). And a lot of language which music projects adopt from social policy makes me uncomfortable, yet I’m often contractually obliged in my evaluation work to count the number of “vulnerable” participants or people who are “furthest from the workplace” etc.

An opportunity to unpick the discourse around music making is important to me. I want to hear other people’s perspectives and learn about how they navigate these issues.

What key questions can I bring to the table and why?

How can we break away from language and labels which separate musicians and “participants”? (Why – see above).

What am I particularly interested in discussing at the event?

Impact of cultural policy on music making and particularly, its relevance to evaluation practices.
What are other people’s perspectives on the What Works agenda and evidence-based policy in relation to music making?

VICTORIA KINSELLA

Birmingham City University

It is evident from the responses and debates thus far, that excellence and inclusion are highly complex terms. It is this diversity in understanding and the various discourses surrounding these terms that has troubled me for some time. In particular, how these are understood and enacted in partnership and collaborative work between in-school music teachers and musicians and what the impact is on learning.

I currently work on a number of funded research projects that explore the role of partnership between schools and specialist music providers for young people at risk and whether participation in regular music-making activities can enable achievement of musical, educational and wider outcomes. There are obvious benefits to musician-teacher collaborations within educational contexts. However, there are also tensions for the formal and non-formal sectors to be working together in this way, as they are predicated on entirely different modus operandi. These differences between the formal and non-formal sectors can add problematic dimensions to partnerships such as: power relations, opposing ideologies and competing discourses linked to expertise, identity, and prior experience. I am sure we would agree that partnership and collaboration implies some sort of equity and reciprocity, however this is not always the case.

Schools are under increasing pressure to promote inclusive and excellence in learning and teaching, and offer an educational experience that addresses individual needs and equality of opportunity. Addressing individual needs and equity will also be of importance for those working in the non-formal sector. However, challenges posed by school assessment and performativity measures can be viewed as indicative of discrimination against creative and cultural forms of intelligence. Excellence and inclusion are therefore often bound by attainment measures which marginalise many young people. For the non-formal music providers and musicians many of these performative and attainment restrictions do not exist. Instead space is offered for the exploration of informal and socially engaged pedagogies.

It is these dichotomies that can cause tension in partnerships. They have a knock on effect on the types of environment created and the division of labour within the classroom between teachers, musicians and young people. There can also often be a sense of hierarchy, where either the teacher or musician is discursively positioned as ‘the expert’ and thus granted power. Part of this hierarchy is the lack of awareness of the dominant discourse that legitimizes it.

Therefore in partnership work there needs to be a re-appraisal of the discourses surrounding practice, as well as open mindedness to critique and reflect on practice and pedagogy. In order to challenge existing orthodoxies there needs to be a shared understanding of what excellence and inclusion is and looks like.

In my lightening talk I therefore want to pose and explore these questions:

Who gets to decide what counts as excellence in partnership work?
How is it measured?
What does inclusion look like in these partnership activities?
How can we disrupt dominant discourses?

GAIL MACLEOD

Why is the topic of this event important to me and my work?
Throughout my career as a creative facilitator the use of the terms inclusion, excellence and intervention have continually shifted. Sometimes these concepts have been vital ideas used to celebrate the success of new approaches. But sometimes I have seen these used as stock terms used over liberally to claim project ‘success’ or effectiveness. In 2011 I became a founder director of Soundcastle, aiming to run new music projects that put the creative autonomy of the community at the heart of all music making. Soundcastle has taken this approach into educational, community and healthcare settings. In founding and funding new projects we are continually up against an insistence from some funders that excellence means being able to perform and inclusion means gathering a huge amount of personal data and intervention means we must set up out to fix a need in society. I am interested in how we stay true to the idea that we can leave the creative process open and advocate for collaborative spaces that haven’t decided what they need to prove before we start making.

What key questions am I interested in why?
How can we move the concept of excellence out of the shadow of classical music?
How might a process-led creative project communicate excellence without a formal presentation?
Are there ways to celebrate the inclusion of a project beyond personal data?
How does the idea of intervention play into the old fashioned concept of outreach?

What will I address in my lightening talk?
Are we included in the inclusion? There can be a tendency within many music projects to create a gold fish bowl of participants with the music leaders, supporting adults/workers or researchers peering in as the group is expected to act, create and devise. In 2014 Soundcastle dropped the use of the word participant in favour of community member. This was part of a growing commitment to resilience as a core value of our creative work. Taking part in a project is not a passive act and we have increasingly found that rooms without observers are richer, more bonded and more dynamic creatively. The challenge has been nurturing music facilitators who are able to leave their egos at the door and take part in a process as much as lead it. If we accept that each member of a creative project has a say in the process then those that hold the space need to be ready to learn just as much as the community involved. When planning, funding and delivering a project what can we gain from coproduction and what might we lose in understanding the wider perspective of the work taking place?

REGINA MURPHY

Why is the topic of this event important to me and my work?

The focus of my work over many years has been the nature of teaching in primary school contexts and all that that entails i.e., initial teacher education, primary teacher expertise, teacher-artist partnerships, the web of relationships that prevail, as well as the subject matter itself expressed through curriculum and its assessment.

Most recently, I initiated a specialism for Bachelor of Education students on socially inclusive music education with colleagues at the IOE DCU. Our concern arose in response to a growing need to look beyond the existing boundaries of teaching to where children and young people experience music, to consider whether and how curriculum can be relevant for them, and how the diversity of musical lifeworlds, mirrored in our communities, can be nurtured within the university.

I am also about to embark on funded research that will look at how creativity, inclusion and excellence are understood in various musical communities.

What key questions am I interested in why?

How can student teachers be nurtured and empowered to think beyond the formal markers of music education?
What foundational skills, competencies and attitudes are prerequisite to creating musical experiences that are both excellent and inclusive?
What do teacher educators in music need to know and be able to do to support student teacher agency?

What will I address in my lightning talk?

In this provocation I consider what curriculum in higher education - namely for initial teacher education - might look like when there is a focus on social intervention in music education. In many instances, we strive for active music learning to engage students and equip them to engage their future charges in ways that are structured, logical and manageable. Yet, as Rusinek and Arostegui (2015) point out, active music learning presupposes ‘the filling of empty vessels’ with ideal musical sustenance. So here’s the dilemma: an absence of material in the vessels may potentially leave students feeling disempowered in other ways, unskilled and ill-prepared to lead in music. Likewise, would we deny a student of literacy the skill of critiquing and analysing literature - simply because they might ultimately only teach primary aged children? We would draw a veil over aspects of the classic music education approaches in the name of social intervention?

Biography

Currently I am Head of School at the School of Arts Education & Movement at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University where I teach across a range of programmes from undergraduate to doctoral level. Previously I held roles as director of CPD, primary school principal and teacher, and was seconded from primary teaching posts to lead music education initiatives at a national level. I have also taught in London and New Zealand.

RICHARD PHEONIX

richard@heartnsoul.co.uk

The topic of this event is important to me because I have been working with musicians with learning disabilities for 12 years, both for organisations as a music facilitator, creative associate and in recent years designing and delivering high quality music and art projects, and as a Director of my own organisation. I work both supporting the development of people’s music making but also the sharing of it in inclusive, accessible and equal environments. I believe the work I am involved with has a high standard of excellence and inclusion, most notably in the form of a recent collaboration with the organisation I work for, Heart n Soul (an Arts Council NPO) and the London Symphony Orchestra. The collaboration grew from a long term relationship with LSO Discovery who were looking to improve accessibility and inclusion within their programme of work. The event, “Our Own Thing”, put the young people with learning disabilities at the centre of the process and each of the 11 unique performances of original music was a true collaboration between the musicians from the LSO and the young people. The relationship wasn’t one of the young people having to fit into a workshop model, or having to work within the confines of the canon of classical music, rather one of listening and responding to what they brought creatively and seeing how the LSO musicians could enhance and support those ideas to life.

I think some key questions that could be addressed when thinking of excellence would be around how to remember and challenge your own privilege and position in society; how this informs what you believe to be ‘excellent’. If we truly want to create inclusive music-making it’s important to listen to what music people want to make.

I have experienced many different ways of working towards creating inclusive music making and have done a lot of work organising and promoting inclusive events. I believe one of the most important things to create authentic and worthwhile projects are personal relationships and being highly individualised when working with people. The saying from the neuro-diverse community, “When you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism” I think applies across all areas of society, and especially within disability and learning disability communities. This should inform any process of inclusion, moving away from any ‘catch-all’ solutions or workshop methods.

If I had the opportunity to do a 2 minute lightning talk I would share a manifesto I wrote called “DIY AS PRIVILEGE: A Manifesto for Musicians” which condenses what I’ve learnt over the past 12 years being involved with supporting people with learning disabilities to make and share music and addresses how you can create spaces that support the removal of barriers to enable wider participation in the liberating nature of the Do-It-Yourself ethos.

Bio: I am an artist with interests in accessibility, inclusion and imperfection and how art and music can intersect these points, remove barriers and make new forms of normal that include rather than exclude. Using music, painting, drawing and interaction I work with communities and on my own to try and draw these disparate ideas together.

I currently work for the learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul as their creative associate, and am the founder and director of not-for-profit organisation Constant Flux.

DIRK PROOST

www.dirkproost.com

What will I address in my lightening talk?

Limitations are welcome!

My experience tells me that both inclusion and excellence give limitations in the expression of art. All these limitations are very welcome. Every person – be it from excellence or inclusion, can contribute with a different and fresh point of view./All people from excellence as well as inclusion give a 'fresh point of view'. And we can learn so much from these different ways of interpreting and expression.

Therefore it is evident that we integrate all kinds of people in our play of art-play.Professional artists, students from the conservatoire, amateurs, disabled people, people from the vulnerable society, refugees and inmates.Everybody can learn so much from each other.

“We don't live in an era of changes but we live in a change of era!" Cyber philosopher Jan Rotmans said. In this period of transition everything changes. Also hierarchy disappears or changes, which makes that we become all 'students' and/or 'teachers'. Hence the heritage of artists like Joseph Beuys and John Cage is very useful in our 21th century. They left us a vocabulary which is extremely interesting to connect all these different people ('Everybody is an artist' - J. Beuys and 'Magic of Sound'/’Anarchic Harmony’ - J.Cage).

In this spirit I developed the formats IN/OUT, Escape Through Art and MULTICOLORS. These are multidisciplinary art projects with many different participants. Professional artists, students from the conservatoire and numerous amateurs communicate through art.IN/OUT focuses on the incarcerated people and many refugees are the protagonists of MULTICOLORS.

DIRK PROOST

www.dirkproost.com

Why is the topic of this event important to me and my work?

This topic is so extremely important to me and my work because I work with all these different people. As I said in my introduction to my lightening talk, everything changes extremely quick. But also people change. Hence we have to create new schools. New opportunities where people of all layers of the society can learn. As art can connect people more than any other language especially schools of arts are so important . Everybody has to be aware that the 21^stcentury needs other artists. This topic can help us to find the ‘new artist’. We have to focus especially on the education in schools of arts and transform thoroughly the pedagogy. The young artists in education have to be aware of the new world where they will act. Artist in education have to notice that art can make a difference in the future. Connecting excellence - people with inclusion - people can open the new artist’s eyes. A new creativity will appear.

What key questions am I interested in why?

1/ Which musical language can you use with all these different people?

2/ Can you offer all instruments to inclusion-students?

3/ How to change the extremely conservative conservatoires?

4/ How to connect excellence - students with inclusion – students?

5/ Is an art project with all these different layers of the society still art?

6/ Is starting from scratch possible with these different people?

CHRIS GRAY

I have worked throughout my career as a community musician, working in a breadth of contexts including community-based groups, charities, national companies and corporate settings. I now work at the University of Aberdeen where I have been Programme Director of the BMus (Hons) Community Music degree since 2012. I am passionate about the training of the next generation of Community Musicians and the continued validation and acceptance of Community Music as an area of academic and practical study.

Why is the topic of this event important to me and my work?

In answering this question I find myself first asking the question 'is it being part of the discussions around Excellence and Inclusion, or is attending the event itself that is important to me and my work?'.

Following much consideration, I realise that although discussion on the two topics Excellence and Inclusion are of great importance, for me, being an active part of the MUSOC community of practice takes precedence.

Being part of this community and the initial and sustained interaction that will come from it will provide me with the challenges I need to continue to discuss, review and renew my thinking and practice on a daily basis.

'Determined people working together can do anything.'Jim Casey, Crossfit Athlete

What key questions am I interested in why?

My key questions surround the who, how, what, when, why's of training community musicians, with particular reference to how these fit within University settings? Despite having taught the subject in a University setting for almost seven years I still challenge myself daily if it is the right setting to do so and if we have the right formula (or even just part of that formula?).

How do we teach or train someone to work with anyone, anytime in any place in and through music?

What will I address in my lightning talk?

My lightning talk will propose a 'non-interference' approach to community music practice as an alternative to intervention. Using Star Trek's Prime Directive I hope to demonstrate that we must first embed ourselves within community settings before initiating, if appropriate, any targeted musical inputs.