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Abstracts

We are delighted to welcome Professor Susan Hallam as our Seminar Discussant, who will draw together the key implications, focused around five themes:

  • Definitions of the 'musical lifecourse';

  • Affordances, constraints, and challenges in the musical lifecourse;

  • Theoretical frameworks for understanding those affordances and challenges within multicultural contexts, focusing specifically on the notions of quality of life, agency, and sense of coherence in life experience;

  • Methodological paradigms; and

  • Research-practice partnerships for the advancement of knowledge concerned with the musical lifecourse.

 

 

Abad, Vicky (Australia)
Supporting lifelong family music practices

 

Lifelong musical practices begin in infancy through musical engagement and interaction with parents in the home. These set the foundations for positive attachment, child development and cultural learning across the lifecourse. In recent times, there has been a societal shift that has witnessed music making transfer to more formal music groups. These changes have been accompanied by technological advances and increased knowledge and understanding of the role of music on early childhood development, and occurred at a time when cut backs to music education may impact on parent confidence to use music. This paper explores and critiques this, and provides a working framework for supporting parents to use music through attending Music Early Learning Programs (MELPs). A working definition of a MELP is provided with an illustrative case study demonstrating how parents and music professionals can partner as shared knowledge creators and experts to attain lifelong family music practices.

 

 

Ansdell, Gary (UK)

When music courses through a life. Music therapy, memorisalising, and epiphanies of the present musical moment.


My contribution to this seminar would focus on a music therapy perspective on the musical lifecourse - a framework that is increasingly used for conceptualising music therapy training and research (including the Masters course I designed for Nordoff Robbins UK). Music therapy can often shed a useful light on the relationship between the disruptions of the lifecourse stemming from illness, disability or social discontinuity, and the unique affordances of music and musicking for epiphanies of wellness within such experiences of illness and disruption. I will illustrate these themes with reference to the longterm research I've done with the music sociologist Tia DeNora - first within mental health, and currently within late-life and end of life care settings.

 

 

 

Barbeau, Audrey-Kristel (Canada)
The relationship between formative musical experience and music participation in late adulthood


My current research, in collaboration with Roger Mantie, aims at investigating formative musical experiences during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, and to relate these experiences to music participation later in life.  Qualitative analysis of interviews (Creswell, 2009), conducted with 35 participants of 60+ years old involved in New Horizons Bands, was carried out. Through participants’ musical life history, perceptions about the effects of formative experience on current musical involvement were collected, as well as self-reported benefits and challenges derived from participatory music in late adulthood. Results are analyzed in the light of the Biopsychosial model (Engel, 1980), emphasising the impact of music on physical, psychological and social wellbeing.  Findings contribute to map the musical lifecourse of older adults and provide a better understanding of the influence of music throughout people’s lives.  

 

 

 

Barrett, Margaret (Australia)
Invented song-making in early learning and life: laying the foundations for lifecourse engagement


Invented song-making as a musical practice arises from the shared music-making and communicative musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009) undertaken by infant and carer from the earliest moments of life. These musical parenting interactions not only promote bonding, intimacy, and shared agency for both infant and carer (Barrett, 2009), they also lay the foundations for later independent music making in childhood (Barrett, 2016), creative practice in and through music (Barrett, 2012), and the use of music as a tool in individual and collective identity work (Barrett, 2011, 2017). Beyond the domain of music learning and life outcomes, shared music-making in early life contributes to school readiness through increasing pro-social skills, literacy and numeracy (Williams et al., 2016). This presentation will draw on an extensive body of research to illustrate the ways in which children’s invented song-making is employed in the early years of the life-course and explore potential enduring outcomes.

 

 

 

Bissonette, Josiane (Canada)
Music performance anxiety: its impact on the musical lifecourse


Music performance anxiety affects numerous musicians (Fishbein, Middlestadt, Ottati, Strauss et Ellis, 1988). Many studies have examined the features and the causes of music performance anxiety and the effect of different treatments (Kenny, 2011), however, the impact of anxiety on the musical lifecourse of professional and amateur musicians is under-researched. This presentation will focus on the potential for music performance anxiety experience to impact upon various facets of the musical lifecourse (musical practice, studies, investment, career, musical well-being). I will outline the theoretical rationale for research with this focus and will consider a justification for a methodological approach that focuses on a retrospective longitudinal data, utilising mixed methods that would include the Personal Report of Confidence as a Performer scale (PRCP), musical lifecourse questionnaire, and semi-directed interviews.

 

 

 

Bolduc, Jonathan (Canada)
Music and social development in pre-schoolers


The preschool period is crucial in the social development of the child. In kindergarten, the relationship between group music making and social cohesion is supported by numerous studies showing that music education improves cooperation and helpful behaviour. Moreover, music making appears to be instrumental for developing social skills and social bonding in preschoolers, including those with lower socioeconomic status. In this presentation, we will examine the effect of implementing a music education program on the development socioaffective skills in children attending the Full-Day Kindergarten in Québec. The Preschool Socioaffective Profile [PSP] will be used as a methodological tool. This measure contains 30 statements addressing affective expression and social interactions that measure overall social adaptation (in children 4–5 years old).

 

 

 

Charise, Andrea (Canada)
Digital Age Studies: Resonant Storytelling and The Resemblage Project

 

Responding to this event’s interest in diverse methodological approaches to musical practice across the lifecourse, my talk presents the preliminary results of a new, digitally-enabled Age Studies research-creation initiative funded by the University of Toronto’s inaugural Digital Scholars Fellowship. The Resemblage Project, a participatory intergenerational storytelling initiative, makes use of profoundly creative digital strategies not only to assemble, but also to imaginatively re-present, Scarborough’s stories of aging. With reference to the theory, workflows, and specific creative outputs generated by this work, I discuss the role of digitally-enabled sound art in adapting, diversifying, and even decolonizing conventional approaches to Age Studies---in Canada and beyond.

 

 

 

Cohen, Annabel (Canada)
The lifecourse potential of making music with the human voice


The human voice provides every individual with a remarkable instrument for making music. As such it has a potential to contribute to the entire musical lifecourse. Yet we know little of the trajectory of this actual or potential contribution. Recent tools have been developed that may help to fill this gap in knowledge. The Singing Experience Scale of Busch and Gick (2015) may be administered to large segments of Canadian Society to determine the extent to which singing plays a role in the lives of Canadians. The AIRS Test Battery of Singing Skills (Cohen, 2015) provides an opportunity to gather data on-line in a variety of singing tasks such as singing a familiar song, making up a song, and learning a new one.   Information on attitudes toward singing and on singing abilities can be compared to data associated with musical instrument performance or other art forms (graphic arts or dance), so as to provide contextualized evidence as a foundation of policy development surrounding the musical arts for the betterment of all segments of Canadian society.

 

 

Creech, Andrea (Canada)
Creative Ageing with Music Technology


Whether creative participation with assistive digital music technology can enhance the quality of life of older people remains under-researched. My research concerned with creative ageing with music technology is positioned within a wider social context characterised by two key societal challenges: 1) an aging population and 2) accelerated use of digital technology, accompanied by a digital divide whereby older people are consistently less likely than younger people to use technology. I argue that assistive digital music technology offers strong potential to serve as a vehicle whereby older people may overcome barriers to musicking and engage in creative musical activities that support quality of life. This area of research offers potential for further social benefits for older people, in that accessible digital music technology may function as a motivational tool to engage with technology more widely, thus equipping older individuals with the skills to integrate more fully in a digital society.

 

 

 

Dubé, Francis (Canada)
Agency in informal and participatory music learning


Music learning has changed dramatically over the past 20 years in response to the emergence of digital media technologies, online participatory cultures, and informal learning practices. Young people are increasingly finding informal and participatory learning (IPL) approaches to be more engaging, relevant, and practically based than formal or traditional approaches to music learning. This presentation reports the findings of research that aimed to develop and implement context-sensitive and effective IPL approaches, in order to deepen and expand the learning and engagement of young music learners growing up in today’s digital age. In particular, the focus in this presentation will be on how IPL approaches to music learning functioned as a context where personal and social agency was developed and performed. The implications for meaningful and relevant lifelong musical practices will be considered.

 

 

 

Flynn, Libby (Australia)

Between spaces: Bridging music used in the therapy room to beyond

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Despite an impressive body of research examining and discussing the role and use of music within the therapeutic space, there remains limited understanding of what happens beyond the therapy room. Specifically, if and how the therapeutic process and use of music in this space has the capacity to shape and/or change people’s engagement, relationship with, and meaning of music. In response to this gap in the literature base, the following presentation reports on findings from a qualitative retrospective research study that explored how the lived experience of group music therapy affected bereaved parents ongoing relationship and engagement with music in their everyday life. A proposed model with narrative examples will be presented to further explore these different trajectories. Overall conclusions from this study suggests there are steps that could be taken to provide music therapy client’s with additional resources and knowledge to help support greater emotional safety, agency, enhanced meaning and intentional longer-term engagement with music in their daily life.

 

 

 

Higgins, Lee (UK)
Community music and its place in the musical life journey


In this presentation, I will consider community music as (1) a theoretical lens and, (2) an approach to practice, through which the musical life journey might be both understood and actioned. Questions surrounding practices that either directly address the life-long learning agenda, or respond to the issues through osmosis, will be examined. After locating community music as part of a wider ecology of musical practices I will present findings from a research project that considers music as a significant tool for working with children in care and how this might help relationship building throughout the life span.

 

 

 

Laes, Tuulikki (Finland)
Inclusion in music education across the lifecourse


In this presentation, I attend to questions of inclusion and accessibility in music education by asking who is entitled to construct their musical agency, what counts as legitimate musical knowledge, and why people seen as in need of care because of their age or dis/ability are treated differently in music educational contexts through perpetuating their pathologized identities. The nature of hegemonic processes and dynamics in mainstream music education theory and practice come under intense scrutiny in this matter. I argue that even if musical activities were made available they are often justified by operating efficiency and health benefits. Hence, there is little, if any, space left for the political voice and active agency of older and/or differently abled individuals in music educational contexts. Drawing upon my research in multigenerational contexts and with differently abled musicians I share insights on extending the scope of transformational musical agency throughout the lifecourse.

 

 

 

 

Mantie, Roger (USA)
The Ethical Imperative to Foster Leisure-time Participation for All People

 

Drawing on posthuman critique (e.g., Briadotti, 2013), I problematize the ways that “rational recreation” has been predicated on normative conceptions of the (white, male, hetereosexual) human subject, thus limiting the potential for more widespread and rewarding leisure participation. I begin by interrogating the “mattering of material-discursive practices” and the “ontology of knowing” (Barad, 2007) in formal music disciplines. I then argue, following Hayles’s (2012) concept of technogenesis, that emerging forms of musicality (Thompson, 2011; Tobias, 2017), musical being (Waugh, 2017), and musical communities (Waldron, 2013) made possible by technology represent opportunities to challenge the liberal humanist “politics of musical knowledge” (Mansfield, 2004). I conclude by offering thoughts on the future of educative recreation and the “intra-activity of becoming.

 

 

 

O’Neill, Susan (Canada)
Affordances of Spaces and Multimodal literacies


This paper explores the affordances of spaces and multimodal literacies in mapping young people’s music engagement and how this impacts their sense of connectedness and wellbeing. Specifically, the paper examines how the material, relational and multimodal nature of young people’s music engagement, referred to here as connected musical lives, promotes connectedness and wellbeing within physical, virtual and hybrid life spaces. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from new materialism and multiliteracies, which allow for the interdisciplinary study of two dimensions of music making in their entanglement, meaning, and materiality, the paper examines evidence from a survey study of over 5000 young people’s music engagement experiences from across Canada. The results point to the need to reassert music, multimodality and materiality into our understanding of mapping the musical lifecourse to enhance young people’s collaboration with instruments and other technologies in spaces that enable literacies, connectedness and wellbeing to emerge.

 

 

 

Peters, Valerie (Canada)
Music education and social emotional competencies: a meta-analysis

 

This presentation will focus on the first phase of a research program, funded by SSHRC, focusing on flourishing, emotion regulation and the development of social and emotional competencies through musicking across the life span: (1) early childhood; (2) youth; and (3) older adults. A critical analysis of the literature (meta-analysis) relating to the potential for music education within formal and informal contexts to function as a vehicle for fostering and sustaining flourishing (Ryff & Singer, 2003) and the development of social and emotional competencies across the life span will be presented. The results of the meta-analysis will constitute important information in identifying research designs and measures of effective music education practices that promote flourishing and the development of social and emotional competencies linked to positive effects in vulnerable populations.

 

 

 

Poon, Johnny (China)
The music education role of professional arts organisations


Hong Kong has epitomized the changes in global arts and culture – a city of vast convergences and deep diversity. Besides its Chinese cultural traditions, Hong Kong is also known for its symmetry with the West.: Hong Kong has among the world’s highest per capita number of young people studying classical music, and accounts for one-seventh of the entire global population taking prestigious Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams each year. However, this apparent picture of rich cultural prosperity is not without its threats given Hong Kong’s recent social, economic and political development. Poon’s presentation will focus on the role higher education plays in community capacity building and social engagement through the arts, and specifically how musical practices in the higher education sector could serve to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead in Hong Kong and Greater China.

 

 

 

Shehan-Campbell, Patricia (USA)
Cultural Cases of the Musical Lifecourse

 

The scholarly study of music in human development attends to the uniquely personal ways that music is meaningful to people in various phases of life.  Attention has been directed to biological and social determinants of music’s uses and meanings, while less attention has been paid to phase-shifting as influenced by cultural environments.  In particular, ways in which race and ethnicity may join with other determinants to shape the musical lifecourse are little known yet important to a fuller understanding of music’s role across the span of human life.  Through ethnographic methods, cultural cases of singers, players, dancers, and avid listeners from African American, Latin American, and indigenous communities will be shared, advancing understandings of lifecourse as it is culturally influenced in childhood, youth, middle and eldering years.  With this contribution, a furthering of the multidisciplinary conceptualization of music across the life span may be attained, with accent of multicultural variance.

 

 

 

Vaillancourt, Guylaine (Canada)
The contribution of music therapy to social justice across the musical lifecourse


For the last 60 years, Canadian music therapists have contributed to social justice by ensuring access to music for marginalized populations of all ages such as children and adults living with autism, developmental disabilities, mental health challenges, as well as older adults, and women and children survivors of violence. Music therapists have expertise in applying best practices within clinical and community settings to promote health and wellness in a safe and ethical manner. Increasing interest in the use of music to enhance social justice necessitates sharing of creative and expressive resources, which in turn invites interdisciplinary practice and research collaboration. Moving forward, the first step is to define our respective fields of expertise in music education, therapy, psychology, sociology, community work and creation, and describe how these may be best realized when working within a context of social justice. The next phase would be to develop a research program that embraces innovative paradigms, such as Arts based research, as this would help to elucidate unique aspects of the creative medium of music.

 

 

 

Varvarigou, Maria (UK)
Fostering young musicians’ subjective wellbeing through intergenerational health musicking


Health musicking describes individual or social musical experiences that aim to ‘regulate emotional or relational states or to promote wellbeing’ (Bonde, 2011, p.121). Intergenerational health musicking is a term used in this paper to describe regular musical interactions between groups of undergraduate musicians and groups of seniors in various health settings. Extant research highlights the positive and long-lasting impact of intergenerational activities on active ageing, cultural exchange and reciprocal learning (Newman et al. 1997). This paper uses the theory of subjective wellbeing (Creech et al. 2013) to explore how intergenerational health musicking has fostered a sense of purpose, autonomy and social affirmation (Creech et al, 2013), leading to increased levels of subjective wellbeing for young musicians. Data have been collected from musicians’ written reflections (n=40) of leading as well as actively participating in the sessions. The study concludes by discussing implications for the training of health musicians at HE settings.

 

 

 

Willingham, Lee (Canada)
Facilitating Lifelong Engagement in Participatory Music Making


The common belief in formal education that music instruction must begin within a window of early age is contradicted as adults engage in intentional, nonformal and semi-structured learning experiences with great success. As an increasingly healthy, aging population seeks to add meaning and value to their lives, post-career and retired participants may find themselves with opportunities to participate in music-making activities with those much younger and with a wide range of experience and abilities. In an educational era of compartmentalization the question arises as to how best to facilitate music making in such settings. How might facilitators demonstrate flexibility and creativity in building lifelong musical skills amongst participants representing different skills and varying ages? As the styles and strategies of leadership are explored, approaches such as presenting/demonstrating, transmission, coaching and facilitating are addressed as models of musical intervention that create space for acquiring and using lifelong skills in participatory contexts.

 

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Boucher, Mathieu (Canada)
Music learning as a context for the development of lifelong self-regulation skills


This presentation will focus on music learning as a context for the development of self-regulation, and the implications for self-regulated learning across the lifecourse. The autonomy required for an efficient music practice has been associated in many studies with the concept of self-regulated learning (SRL) (McPherson & Renwick, 2011; Varela, Abrami, & Upitis, 2014). While most studies explored how high-performing musicians self-regulate during practice, few studies focused on methods or tools to encourage the development of self-regulation skills among musicians. A crucial component of SRL is the musician’s ability to adapt his performance based on feedback obtained while performing (McPherson & Zimmerman, 2002). Complimentary video feedback has been studied in various athletic contexts with positive results, but little is known on its effect on a musician’s self-regulation skills. I will present the results from a study which explored the effect of video feedback on the self-regulation processes of college-level musicians.

 

 


Coppey, Sonia (Canada)
Burnout, resilience, and the musical lifecourse

 

Much attention has been paid to the lifelong advantages of musical training. However, the phenomenon of burnout, for some, interferes with the musical lifecourse. This presentation therefore focuses on burnout and how resilience may mediate the post-burnout of young professional musicians. Drawing on preliminary results from my study involving professional musicians who have experienced burnout in a period of one to ten years after the end of their curriculum, I will discuss the environmental factors and more specifically the role of the institutions with respect to the well-being of these musicians. Finally, I will consider how resilience, or lack of it, may have influenced the musical lifecourse of those young musicians who experienced burnout.

 


Gaudette-Leblanc, Aimée (Canada) 
Musical practices and development of the parent-child attachment relationship

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Various specialists have explored the practices that foster the development of the parent–child attachment relationship. Studies show that, right from birth, neonates appear to be more interested in communicating with their parents according to certain conditions. Thus, newborns participate more actively in dialogue when they are presented with repeated, rhythmic, and contrasting sounds. They therefore show more sustained attention when listening to songs than spoken words. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the majority of mothers intuitively adapt their songs to their infant’s needs and that infants adapt their behaviors according to the songs they hear. Music awakening activities would therefore foster parent–child interaction. This presentation describes a research approach designed to better capture the impact of music awakening practices on the development of the parent–child relationship and proposes effective interventions for parents and educators.

 

 

 

Pierre-Vaillancourt, Zara (Canada)
The meaning of listening as a lifelong musical practice


“The foundational interaction with music is listening” (Reimer & Wright, 1992)  
This presentation focuses on the definition of music appreciation (or music listening) particularly for youth and teachers, and how it is taught in secondary music classrooms in Quebec. Music is an important part of the adolescent’s life (North, Hargreaves, & O’Neill, 2000). Furthermore, the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood seem to be a critical period for the development of musical preferences (North & Hargreaves, 2008). Therefore, I will present findings from my research concerned with how teachers and students together approach music listening inside and outside of their classrooms. I will focus on the meaning of music appreciation and listening in the formative years of youth and what the implications may be for lifelong music listening practices and engagement. 

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