Music Education at Laurier is deeply influenced by Community Music philosophies and practice. As prospective teachers work their way through the undergraduate program, the foundational principles of CM are infused into their pedagogy and leadership development. Here are some of the principles that guide CM study and research at Laurier. Frustration with traditional classroom approaches as noted earlier is replaced with CM perspectives and application to teaching and learning in music programs. It is noted that this approach is at the early developmental stages with much more work on research, implementation strategies, and the documenting of best practices still to come.
Figure 1. Emerging Model of Laurier's Community Music
1. With music at the center, Community Music provides for the development of personal musicianship through engaging in workshop facilitation, and building
collaborative learning communities. CM intrinsically honors the musical life of its participants, and invites the participation from one and all.
2. The inclusive act of making music collectively is an empathetic “act of hospitality” (Higgins, 2012), a chance to say “yes.” Community Music’s vision states that everyone has the right and ability to make, create, and enjoy their own music. CM focuses on relationships, and creates conditions where tolerance and respect can replace hierarchy and judgment.
3. Laurier’s CM graduate students engage in contemplative practice, based on a mindfulness-loving-kindness ethos. This moment-to-moment awareness helps to slow down the clock… to live and work reflexively in response to the challenges and successes faced. Loving-kindness is another way to express compassion for all (Miller, 2000), where the CM facilitator is able to relate the experiences to the needs of the participants. Where there is loving-kindness, respect, homage to the other, a community is established and maintained.
4. CM embraces a range of learning practices or pedagogies. There are occasions where formal instruction provides the musician with the necessary facility to progress. However, our experiences reveal that a variety of non-formal and informal practices provide learners with limitless opportunities to explore various facets of musical development in an equally limitless range of modes and practices. Several years ago, an elementary school in Freeport, Maine, now known as Mast Landing School, developed a creed. It included statements like “we believe that children should be encouraged to be self-directing, to make decisions, and accept the consequences,” or, “we believe that children should have the freedom to pursue their personal interests and goals and to develop new ones” (Miller, 2000, pp. 116-117.) CM encourages similar goals, and favors a negotiated curriculum where consensus is built between instructor and student.
5. CM’s roots in the United Kingdom and Ireland were grounded in
sociopolitical activism (Higgins, 2012, p. 21). Magali Kleber from Brazil, the chair of ISME’s 2014 CM Activity Commission suggests that musical
pedagogy is sociocultural, a “dimension which includes symbolic values, inter-institutional relations, conflict, and negotiation” (Kleber et al., 2013, p.
232). The typical practice of the conservatoire model, from which most of us derived our educational values, is to create technically sound and expressive performers, and ensemble leaders who efficiently polish their charges into a mistake free (well, that’s the hope!) group of musicians for pubic presentation.
However, the act of “musicking” (Small, 1998) embraces the entire context of the composer, performer, listener, and all of the attendant players that make music participation possible. This also includes a commitment to social justice awareness…a knowledge that our ecological and societal responsibilities are not disparate components from our artistic endeavors.
6. Lifelong Learning is fundamental to CM’s vision and practice. Especially, in an era where discretionary time and resources are available to a wider range of age and career stages, it is evident that the more senior members of our
population are embarking on journeys of enlarging their musical skills,
knowledge, and understanding, which in turn, enhance a more meaningful and enjoyable life experience. “Music learning as a lifespan endeavor may be continuous or periodic, personal or social, formal or informal, goal-oriented or achievement-neutral, and diversified or persistently focused” (Myers, et al., 2013, p. 149). There are also examples of intergenerational music experiences in both schools and in the wider community (Beynon et al., 2013).
7. Health and Wellbeing CM addresses the whole being, body, mind, and spirit.
CM musicians have been called “boundary-walkers” (Deane & Mullen, 2013, p. 28) who inhabit public territories that lie between other professions, and who include health settings as contexts for musicking. CM activities include programs that reach out to participants who are emotionally and/or physically challenged, such as those described by DeVito and Gill (2013). In Canada, the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community is a founding partner in the Music Care Conference programs, where participation in music as a means of
experiencing wholeness in life is researched and expressed (Music Care Conference).
8. A Culture of Inquiry Ongoing studies through research projects, conducted by both graduate students and faculty provide information for ongoing best practices. The questioning and critical thinking applied to practices in CM continue to shape values and inform decision-making. A culture of inquiry need not be solely based upon funding sources, but may be conducted as an ongoing, informal means of answering questions of curiosity, or simply diagnostically seeking for better paths to follow.
When asked “what is community music?” it is easier to describe its characteristics and domains or to describe its practices, than to confine it to a concise definition. The
“Model of Laurier Community Music” (see Figure 1) describes attributes or pathways to the central place where music in our human experience resides. Other studies provide multi-dimensional insights into CM’s structures and pedagogy. Higgins (2012) addresses the challenge of attempting to “situate a set of practices” (p. 21) by concluding that CM is “a musical practice that is an active intervention between a music leader or facilitator and participants (IBID).” In the broadest of strokes, this quasi-definition serves well as a starting point to define our roles as community music leaders; we facilitate or intervene through the practices and processes of music with our student participants.
The next stages at Laurier involve collaborating with Music Therapy and the emergence of Community Music and wholeness programs. There is a currently a proposal for further graduate programs that focus on the health and well-being dimensions of CM, seeking to deepen the understanding and impact that CM has on individuals in our communities.
References
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