Welcome
Welcome to Making Music Together, my online portfolio for my doctoral research into the community musicians’ role in music making with participants. Across the UK community musicians and organisations support groups and individuals to make their own music, to create new pieces, and to write their own songs with the understanding that in doing so lies the potential for transformative and empowering experiences. Consequently, music co-creation is a regular feature of contemporary UK community music practice.
As a UK community musician, my practice includes music co-creation. Through this research I explore my co-creative music-making with individuals and groups. Specifically, I zoom in on processes of invention and exchange in making new music together. My engagement with this study is underpinned by my intention to deepen understanding of not only my own professional practice, but also to attempt to explore possibilities for a wider understanding of community music through the study of contemporary working practices. So, for the past few years, I have undertaken research through music-making with several groups across England to consider:
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In what ways do community musicians make music with participants? What are the processes, purpose and meaning? And what might this suggest about community music?
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How is new music / new material generated in the music workshop and what is the community musicians’ role in this making?
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To what extent is the creation of new music a collaborative endeavour between participant(s) and community musician(s)? What does this mean for notions of creating your ‘own’ music within interventionist frameworks, and to what extent does this support empowering and/or transformational experiences?
PORTFOLIO NAVIGATION
This portfolio works together with my written exegesis. It includes;
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PaR Settings: information about the groups I made music with for this research
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Critical Incidents: significant moments that emerged through the practice and offer understanding to the processes of music co-creation in community music practice
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Ethics: a consideration of ethical practice in community music Practice as Research
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Dissemination: outputs during PhD study
I suggest two routes of navigation:
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Visiting the PaR settings first for contextual information about each group. From this, associated critical incidents can be accessed, which are located at the bottom of the PaR setting page.
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Visiting the critical incidents first which are grouped thematically. Within each theme are critical incidents that presented from across the PaR settings. Contextual information about the associated PaR settings can be accessed by the map icon at the top of the page.
Click to view the
exegesis