Journal of Arts & Communities - “Future Histories”: Positioning Ourselves and Connecting with Others, Jun 2022

In this article I survey ways community music (CM) and school music might be considered as related and connected pathways in individuals’ unique musical lives. School, while existing within communities, is considered a separate space for music teaching and learning, yet is one avenue by which musical participation can broadly occur within and among a variety of community spaces. Music teachers in schools can consider how the purposes and practices of CM might relate to goals of lifelong musicianship, thereby informing school music. I include background on CM and school music in the United States and discuss purposes that can underlie varied CM endeavours. I propose a loose definition for CM, provide examples and discuss differences among school music and CM leadership in each domain. I encourage broadened purposes for school music and an appeal to the human need for music, with a value for space to make one’s own meanings as music learners and, broadly, to engage with the world as musical people. When acknowledged by music educators as valid, purposeful and connected within as well as outside the classroom, CM can potentially become meaningfully connected to everyday lives in society, perhaps furthering the ways in which society regards musicianship.

This study elaborates on the contradictory position of socially supportive haptic arts and crafts in the light of recent social distancing requirements, in order to gain insight into the roles of the socially engaged field in the COVID-19 afflicted world. The contrast between the practices of extreme social distancing and intensive social engagement is astonishing, yet both of these practices became driving forces of daily life during the pandemic. This study is also concerned with the representation of socially supportive visual arts and crafts during the first 27 days of lockdown in the United Kingdom. By collecting mass media data of socially engaged grassroots events during the observed period and analysing them in context of social flow and personal needs fulfilment, which are viewed with an understanding of their non-hierarchical nature, it raises questions for further discussions on motivations of contributing to ‘coronavirus kindness’ and future possibilities for the socially engaged arts and crafts field.