International Journal of Community Music - Mapping the Musical Lifecourse, Mar 2021

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.