Learn about Unity Charity, a national charity dedicated to empowering youth aged 13–29 through hip hop programs in all art forms, including beatmaking, MC, graffiti, breakdancing, and spoken word. Programs are all offered free of charge.
About Unity Charity Unity Charity programs are organized in three streams:
Inspire: performance-based single workshops offered primarily in schools to introduce youth to hip hop art forms as powerful tools for expression and overcoming challenges.
Engage: weekly community programs that build resilience, social networks and skills. These programs are led by peers and mentors.
Empower: advanced programs that work towards professional development and launching careers. The programs focus on building economic prospects, leadership skills development, and career exploration.
Featured Program: Rough Draft
Rough Draft is led by facilitator Adrian Bernard, and as part of the ‘Empower’ stream is an incubator program to help MCs launch their careers. The program focuses on developing technical and business skills in the music industry. Adrian brings in guests from the industry to support participants in developing professional aspects of recording, writing, performing, and career building.
Competencies needed to facilitate well
Training in youth work: Unity Charity trains their artist-instructors in youth work and in conflict resolution.
Able to hold space for participants: facilitators need to be able to balance skills development with holding space and building community. This means an awareness of when to slow down, take time just to chat, and build community among participants.
Continuous development of your craft: Facilitators need to be good at their own craft that they are teaching, and also continue to learn and get better at their craft.
Support participants wherever they’re at: meet participants where they are at, support them to reach their goals.
What Does Success Look Like?
When participants are clearly enjoying themselves in the program, that’s a good session, and if participants keep in touch with each other after the program ends, that’s program success. Success is also when participants have improved artistically through the program, developed their networks and professional skills, and developed their community. Long-term success is building self-expression and leadership, such as when former participants become leaders and board members at Unity Charity.
View sections of the documentary:
00:00 Introduction to Unity Charity and streams of programming
Explore the project Naskwahamâtowin (Cree, meaning ‘let’s all share in the music), implemented by Kehewin Native Dance Theatre in central Alberta, in partnership with the national NGO Make Music Matter, supported with a grant from Bell Let’s Talk, and supported by the National Music Centre in Calgary. This music creation project combined Make Music Matter’s Healing in Harmony therapy model with Indigenous music, languages, and culture to help address the mental health crisis in the community and other effects of intergenerational trauma.
Context for the Project
The project was led by Rosa John (Ciboney Taino Nation) and Melvin John (Plains Cree Nation), who describe the devastating impacts of colonization, and the role of music in healing. Melvin John describes how the connection to song, language and land was broken because of Canada’s residential schools. Participating artist Tony Duncan (Apache-Arikara and Hidatsa Nations) describes how the drum connects people to the heartbeat and to Mother Earth. Rosa John describes how children are the focus for Indigenous nations, at the heart of everything they do.
Design of Naskwahamâtowin
The project used a mobile recording studio that visited four reservation schools each week for 12 weeks. Children at each school worked together to write and record songs with producer Cindy Paul. Children also worked with guest artists, such as Tony Duncan (flute player and hoop dancer) and Deb Houle (singer-songwriter). A therapist was always available at every session for participants.
At the end of 12 weeks, children from all four schools travelled to the Kehewin Native Dance Theatre studio for one week to create one final song: Mistatim, Cree for ‘horse teachings’. The children learned about horses and horse teachings from Equine Therapist Jody John (Plains Cree Nation), and got to ride a horse. Following those experiences, the children collectively composed the song Mistatim, writing the lyrics, and singing or playing instruments, which was recorded on site by Melvin John. A therapist was also on site for the week.
The song Mistatim is available through all streaming platforms under the name Nikamo Collective. The music video for Mistatimis available on YouTube.
Competencies needed to do this work
Listening: humans have two ears and one mouth to listen twice as much. Listening and being present is key to connecting well. In the sessions, be attentive to each kid and how they can and want to contribute. Let the kids do what they do best in their own unique way.
Be authentic: Be yourself, and follow through on what you promise. Kids know if you are not genuine. You need to know yourself and be comfortable with yourself to engage authentically with participants.
Build relationships that are culturally sensitive and specific: the project was successful in part because the team visited each school personally, and the weekly sessions happened at each school. This helped demonstrate commitment and built trust over time. The project worked because it was specific to that geographic areas and the specific Indigenous nations there. Any project working within Indigenous communities must be culturally sensitive to that area.
What does success look like?
Success can be seen in smiles, when the participants are clearly enjoying themselves. The project leaders saw kids offering to contribute more over the project.
The Community Music School of Waterloo Region (CMSWR) is based in Waterloo, Ontario, and since 2012, the school aims to provide music lessons and music programs to children and youth in the Waterloo region who are underserved or at-risk. The programs aim to develop kids’ musical skills, creativity, confidence, and love for music.
Purpose and Context
CMSWR aims to build musical skills of children and youth as well as fostering relationships and building community. The school offers one-on-one music lessons and group music programs, all delivered by volunteer music teachers.
Social service agencies refer kids to CMSWR, and families can also fill out a self-referral form. The school serves many families who are new Canadians, or who have come to Canada within the last five years. An additional 30% of participants are referred through mental health agencies.
In addition to providing a variety of music programming, CMSWR also lends instruments to families to be able to practice at home, and has a nutrition program for families in the building when lessons are offered.
Structure of Lessons: Student-led learning
Music classes at CMSWR are student-led rather than curriculum-driven. Volunteer instructors get training to focus on meeting students where they are at, whether a student wants to learn classical repertoire, pop repertoire, or improvisation. Similarly some students want to learn an instrument to a high level of proficiency; other students are looking for enjoyment and connection.
Activities
First lesson is the ‘get to know you lesson’. Try talking to the student about their favourite music; listen to some examples together. This helps bonding between student and teacher, and helps the teacher understand what the students likes to listen to and how they interact.
Working with neuro-diverse students requires different strategies within a music lesson, such as getting students on their feet, use visuals, and helping students focus on tasks.
Competencies to do this work well
Flexibility: teachers need to be adaptable and student-first, particularly in working with students from diverse cultures, with diverse needs. This sometimes means that teachers need to take their own egos out of the picture, as some students may not be there to become high-level musicians or may not respond to conservatory-style teaching methods.
Strong musicianship: teachers need to be proficient in their instrument, with a level of theory to support students with diverse interests and needs.
Able to connect with kids: instructors need to want to work with kids, and be sensitive to each student’s particular context. Instructors need to genuinely enjoy working with kids.
Attitude that aligns with the school: instructors need to be able to work with kids and support them on their music journey.
What does success look like?
Success will look differently depending on each student. In some cases, when a student feels motivated rather than discouraged, or figures out a particular skill. Longer term, success is when students continue to love music even after graduating from the program.
Another indicator of success is seeing parents forming connections with each other, particularly immigrant parents connecting with other parents who speak the same language.
End-of-year concerts often show all facets of these successes, as students feel a sense of accomplishment in performing, and friends and family are gathering together to support and celebrate the students.
Music in Communities is a nonprofit collective based in Canning, Nova Scotia that promotes music literacy, presents live music, supports under-represented voices, and strengthens communities in the Annapolis Valley through shared musical experiences. Music in Communities also has the mandate of providing paid work to local musicians.
Programs
Music in Communities (MiC) offers diverse programming to support people in rural Nova Scotia. Executive Director Kim Barlow notes that people in their communities experience food insecurity, housing insecurity, mental health challenges, and forms of isolation. MiC has worked on many kinds of programs for diverse groups within their communities, including newcomers, youth at risk, people with disabilities, and seniors. They are also partnering with Mi’kmaq nations to collaborate on musical programming serving Indigenous communities. Sometimes MiC initiates programming, and sometimes they respond to community requests for programs or facilitators.
Here are a few featured initiatives:
After-school programs: MiC has two after-school programs. One program is for kids aged 9–12 to learn the ukulele. The program aims to build skills, but also to provide fun and less structure for kids to enjoy themselves outside of school. Instructors include music-based games, and structured and unstructured time each week. The second program is a songwriting and performance program for youth aged 13–17. These older participants generally want to play music but have not had an opportunity to play with and for others live. MiC also hosts monthly open mic nights for the teens, open to friends and family.
Community Song Circles: Executive Director Kim Barlow hosts weekly song circles open to anyone. Participants take turns playing songs for each other, often inviting the group to join in. While the circle is open to anyone, this program tends to attract older musicians.
Present Moment Singers: a weekly sing-a-long session for seniors at a retirement residence in Wolfville, Present Moment Singers is led by Wendy LaPierre and Tyler McDonald. Seniors connect and have fun singing songs together for an hour each week.
Queer Choir: based in Wolfville, the choir welcomes queer community members to come together to sing, and have a queer-dedicated weekly space. The choir approached MiC to provide some leadership to guide rehearsals, although the rehearsals are more shared space to make music together, with some performances through the year.
Featured Activity: Ukulele tag
An activity suitable for children, this activity uses the classic game of tag, in which one person tries to touch the other players to get them out. When a player is tagged, they go to ‘jail’ located next to one of the instructors. Another player can get their friend out of jail by repeating a chord progression or melody played on the ukulele by the instructor. Ukulele tag helps kids learn ukulele skills within a fun context so that the learning is almost subconscious.
Competencies to do this work well
Able to connect with specific groups: facilitators need to be able to be responsive to the specific communities they work with. For example, instructors leading the kids programming should be able to connect with kids and keep programming engaging.
Have structure but be flexible: Musicians always have a plan so that there is structure for each session, but they are flexible to adapt to the specific needs and energy of the group. Providing choices for participants is also an important part of this flexibility, checking in at the beginning to figure out what participants would like to do.
Diverse musical skills: Musicians working in community contexts need a wide skill set. Being able to play several instruments will allow a facilitator to adapt and support participant needs in more ways.
Valuing collaborative processes and shared leadership: Facilitators at MiC approach participatory music with the understanding that the program is a collaborative process. Everyone has experience to bring to a group. The facilitators look for ways to encourage participants to teach and share their own knowledge to create environments of shared leadership.
What does success look like?
The key outcome for programs is that people are excited about all things music. In particular, facilitators hope the kids and youth get joy out of making music well before feeling like it is work. Success is also defined by good engagement in programs and events, including the numbers of people showing up to programs and events, and also people reporting that they are feeling good about sharing their music with others, appreciating the music shared by others, and feeling more connected to each other.
Explore the connection between music and nature through Louise Campbell’s work with The C.A.R.E. Centre in her project Taking it Outside.
Louise Campbell is a musician and cultural mediator in Montreal, who created the workshop Taking it Outside: Making Music & ArtInspired by Nature. In 2023, Louise created a version of this participatory workshop for her sound installation at Parc Frédéric-Back featuring music from her album Sources: Music inspired by the St. Lawrence River. Louise picked Parc Frédéric-Back in part because it is a fully accessible urban park.
Introducing clients of The C.A.R.E. Centre
While Louise worked with many different participants and groups, the documentary shows Louise working with clients of The C.A.R.E. Centre, a recreational and educational day program that enhances the lives, functioning and communication of adults with severe physical disabilities. Olivia Quesnel, Executive Director of The C.A.R.E. Centre, describes how C.A.R.E. clients, all over the age of 21, have strong connections with music, and use music to be expressive and creative.
Featured activities
Louise provides multiple ways of facilitating to include participation from verbal and non-verbal participants. In the workshop, Louise asks participants to listen to the music in the park, and imagine or draw a bird as they listen to the music. She invites participants to imagine where the bird lives. Next, Louise hands out brightly coloured scarfs and invites participants to move like their birds, with options for participants to share their movements with each other.
Competencies needed to do this work
Empathy: Listening to participants and what they want, then reflecting that listening by making changes as a facilitator, rather than making participants change.
Desire to connect with people: Being curious about people and seeking to understand how they experience the world, which ensures facilitation is more responsive.
Skilled musicianship: A high level of musical skill is required to be able to work with participant interests and abilities within participatory creative music.
Engaging in shared creativity: Louise describes excitement in creating music with others, and Olivia describes the importance of creative exploration for participants.
Advice for Community-Engaged Musicians
The workshop is successful if people are having fun. If people aren’t having fun, then adapt the activities, changing or tweaking so that participants stay engaged and have a good time.
Musicians can pick up the skills they need as they go along, but they need the heart and desire to do this work to be able to do it well. The desire to connect is most important.
Mediation is important in that it is a relationship. Making music is about exchanging something of each other to create together.
Explore the project Music From Hope, in which Nour Kaadan and Tarek Ghriri lead creative music workshops for refugee youth ages 5 – 25 who have recently arrived in Canada and are staying in temporary housing communities in Toronto.
About musicians Nour Kaadan and Tarek Ghriri
Nour Kaadan and Tarek Ghriri, the founders of Music from Hope, started offering workshops for refugee youth in Beirut, Lebanon, and are now based in Toronto. The musicians lead music workshops, and use sound, songwriting, body percussion, and nonviolent communication to encourage interaction between participants. No background in music is necessary. The goal of Music From Hope is for participants to have a safe place to feel and express their ideas through music.
Design of Music From Hope workshops
Refugee families don’t tend to stay in temporary housing for more than one month after arriving in Canada, so the youth may arrive or leave the program suddenly. Nour and Tarek design a set of 3 to 4 workshops so that participants can join at any point, with youth who have attended more sessions leading the newer participants. Each workshop is structured in three parts: warmup, body of main activities, and closing activities.
Featured activities
Warm-up: Tarek leads the warm-up that uses a mirroring exercise to match the energy of the kids (shy or energetic). Tarek also runs around with high energy to help kids focus on him and lose their shyness.
Recognize music notes: use music note cards to learn different rhythms and musical patterns. The facilitators then get participants to use the cards to lead each other.
Participant sharing: Tarek and Nour invite participants to share a song or activity. Sometimes this is then used in the next workshop.
Pass the shaker: Hit the drum on the beat for kids to pass the shaker in rhythm, and when the shaker stops, that participant is the leader of the exercise.
Competencies needed to do this work
Improvisation skills: to be able to improvise musically, and also to work through unexpected ideas or reactions to workshop activities is important. The workshop can change significantly in following participants. Being adaptive keeps the workshops fun and exciting and engages participants.
Responsive and adaptive: Paying attention to the participants, meeting their energy, and responding accordingly to make sure everyone feels included and the participant needs are met.
Knowledge of immigration/refugee experience: Nour and Tarek have experienced global displacement, which helps in building connections with newcomer youth. Yet both facilitators are careful not to assume they know any participant’s experience.
What does success look like?
One outcome for the workshops is to build respect among participants through the musical games. The kids are very creative, so success is seeing the kids over the set of workshops becoming comfortable to lead the sessions, even telling the facilitators to step aside so they can lead their idea.
Explore choirs as a vehicle for community building with Allison Girvan, a conductor who uses global song to create connections and build relationships across cultural differences.
Allison is a choral conductor and community music practitioner in Nelson, British Columbia. She has organized 5 community choirs of a variety of ages. The documentary features:
Fireworks Community Choir,open to any and all singers for one annual event, open to as many people who would like to come and sing together in the community. In 2023, the choir had 250 participants, which was the first time this special choir happened since the pandemic.
Lalin Vocal Ensemble, an auditioned choir of young adults that grew out of the youth choir program, as there were singers in the teen group wanting to continue , and Allison identified opportunities for leadership and mentorship development, as well as digging into more challenging repertoire.
Philosophy underpinning choral work
To Allison, it is a misperception that a focus on community-building in choirs will compromise musical excellence. By nurturing trust, and integrating intentional social interactions such as eating together or going on a trip together, the music changes in a profound way.
As someone with mixed heritage, Allison finds global music provides a lens to look at ways in which people share the human experience. Approaching repertoire is a way into another culture’s music based on integrity: how do these words resonate for each singer? What do the words mean? Singing diverse repertoire helps singers connect across cultural differences.
Competencies to do this work well
Cultural competency: In choosing diverse repertoire, Allison ensures that music is appropriate to be sung. Some cultures, especially Indigenous societies, do not share songs outside of particular contexts or people, unless a song is gifted. Additionally, some groups who have a history of oppression may be reclaiming their own music, so Allison is careful to build relationships to navigate these choices. This involves talking to many people of those cultures, and knowing how to own up to a mistake if it is made.
Empathy and space for emotions: If a rehearsal goes by without the choir laughing, something is missing. People may express themselves joyfully one day, or more sorrowfully the next. Trust that whatever is presented is what needs to happen. Mutual trust allows grace to be given to the facilitator as well since there is a mutual understanding and forgiveness that has been cultivated.
Embodiment of group values: Leading by example and igniting joy, kindness, confidence and compassion all help the group to reach those goals faster collectively by seeing an example of it.
Conducting is relational: rather than the conductor “making” the music, Allison sees conducting as in electricity, that energy passes through the conductor to singers. Conducting is relational, taking the energy and reflecting it to the group and the audience.
Musical skills responsive to the participants:singers describe Allison’s musical ability in knowing what to keep and what to let go of. Allison is trained as a singer and conductor, but she is compelled to use that training to build community.
About VAMS VAMS offers music lessons, recording sessions, and live performance opportunities for disabled musicians in the metro Vancouver area. VAMS was formed in 1988 by Sam Sullivan and Dave Symington, two musicians who were involved in life-altering accidents that changed the way they could play music. No two people have the same musical journey, so the focus of VAMS is to support each unique musician to achieve their musical goals.
Bryden Veinot is the program coordinator of the VAMS, and together with program assistant Noah Stolte, they support musicians with disabilities achieve their artistic goals. Graeme Wyman, program manager at the Disability Foundation, manages VAMS as well as other programs.
Featured Activities
Music lessons: the program staff assess what is needed in the moment to adapt, such as placing chord shapes onto the music for a client with a brain injury.
Recording: the staff are ‘musical conduits’ and the clients are the producers. The staff is there to bridge the gap so that musicians can record their music and realize their vision.
Live performance: staff promote performance opportunities, and search for accessible venues for performers, including the building itself and the location (close to transit).
Competencies needed to do this work well
Relationship Building: Staff aim to make genuine connections. Clients are able to be emotionally vulnerable when trust has been built with the staff at VAMS through genuine connections. This keeps the door open for creativity in a way that is authentic.
Patience: VAMS staff need patience to follow and support clients at their pace. VAMS staff need to understand the ability of each client and adapt to match the client so they feel comfortable and validated.
Adaptability and Problem Solving: The staff have to find the best way to support clients to get to their musical goals. Sometimes, VAMS can work with their sister society Tetra to design adaptive devices. Bryden shows a guitar that can be strummed with a foot pedal as an example.
What Does Success Look Like?
Clients should feel like they are getting a positive professional music experience, and clients should see progress in working towards their music goals.
Success is building awareness that fights the stigma against musicians with disabilities. This includes integration between the Vancouver music scene and disabled community in Vancouver. The Strong Sessions is an event that pairs VAMS artists with local bands to perform sets together as a way of supporting disabled musicians within the larger music scene.
Finally, what is ability? Every person that comes through the door has incredible ability to make music. VAMS staff try to remove barriers for clients to reach their musical goals, to ‘re-imagine what’s possible.’
View sections of the documentary:
00:24 Introduction of VAMS Musicians 01:09 Overview of the Program 02:37 Featured Activities 06:03 Competencies 07:34 What Does Success Look Like?
Hi. I’m Rebecca Barnstaple. I am the manager of Community Initiatives Research and Innovation here at Chigamik Community Health Center. I’m also a post-doctoral research fellow at The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph and I am very excited to welcome you to this music and Health Resource.
Like many of the people you’re going to see in these videos, I wear many hats, besides the two things I already shared with you. I’m also a dance therapist, and I work in the field of dance and health.
I have been offering programs here at Chigamik for almost eight years for people with Parkinson’s and movement disorders. I was invited to direct this resource based on my experience in the field of dance and health and as many of you probably realize, dance and music are so in meshed and have long histories in many cultural practices associated with health and well-being.
One of the things that you will also see throughout this resource is the idea of health itself is a very multi-dimensional thing. People will be talking about not only physical health but mental health and well-being, social connectedness. These ideas are really difficult to separate and when we think about artistic and holistic practices, these are ways that we can address health in a multi-dimensional way. So music-based and arts-based resources are really gaining visibility and traction as ways of approaching some of the most urgent health crises of our time.
You are going to see videos from people who are researchers, practitioners, therapists, community members, people who are doing community engaged work. And you will see that many of the folks who are going to share with us do many of those things at the same time and also separately.
On Health, Social Prescription, and the Arts
More than just the absence of disease or helping people medically recover from illness, health is more and more understood to be broadly defined as helping people access a sense of thriving and well-being, and this is often connected to finding meaning in the activities that we engage in.
One of the things that we’ve started doing here at Chigamik that is really linked with a lot of these music and health initiatives is social prescribing. Social prescribing is a pathway for clinicians, whether they’re doctors, nurses, social workers, mental health workers, to refer people to non-clinical services so it it creates a path for people to access things in the community that can help contribute to that sense of well-being thriving and meaning.
Many of the best examples of social prescribing programs are related to arts and health.
There’s a a wonderful program called “Arts on Prescription” and several of the initiatives that you’ll hear about in this resource have a social prescribing element. I’m very excited because here at Chigamik, we’re actually launching into a partnership with SingWell which several of the people that you’ll hear from are involved, in which is the creation of a health choir for people with COPD and breathing disorders and their Care Partners.
The other thing that’s exciting about that and several of the other initiatives that we’re sharing is not only the provision of a new program and service for people that can contribute to their sense of health and wellbeing, there is a research component attached to it so we’re able to better understand really what are the impacts for people who are participating in these programs. And also what are the best ways to facilitate access, lower barriers for people to access these programs in the community.
I am very excited to share this resource with you. I have brought together many different colleagues who have also referred other colleagues to share with you a real sense of the diversity of practices associated with music and health. A range of ways that people have gotten into doing this work. I really hope you find it as inspiring as I have. Thank you.
My name is Rob Lutes. I’m a singer-songwriter, musician, and music educator who lives in Pointe-Clair, Quebec.
Music and mental health, it’s an enormous question and the answer could be enormous, but in general for me, music is just good for my brain and good for my body. Playing, singing, composing, exploring, listening to music, talking about music, all these things just make me happier. (They) make me feel better more fulfilled, more engaged, more excited about my life and the world. And in a world full of difficult things, particularly in recent years when it’s been fraught with politically charged events and difficulties, music is a place where there’s so much beauty. So many great things happening. It’s a place where I can find and others can find ways to tackle these things, cope with these things emotionally.
Music is filled with so many emotions and in my definition music is a shared experience. You know that someone else is feeling what you’re feeling. Whether you’re listening to a piece by Beethoven or a song by any songwriter, and no matter what it is they’re expressing, if it’s touching you then you know that you’re connecting. And to me that’s a huge part of the musical experience as a writer and a performer.
What I’m trying to do is connect and it’s the same with workshops. When I give workshops, I’m trying to connect and to me that’s the real center of health, that connection that you can find through music.
On songwriting and music history for seniorsat home
I’ve been doing workshops on songwriting and music history, particularly Blues history since about 2000. And what got me started was basically touring and festivals where I would be going somewhere and they would say what kind of workshops could you offer.
And so, I developed workshops on these two things. When the pandemic hit, a person named Fred Agnus, who was director of an organization in Vaudreuil, Quebec called Rézo (or network) asked me one day. “Rob could you develop something for these people who can’t leave their homes?” They were isolated because of the pandemic and so I took about a week and I thought about it.
I thought, I’ve always been really into music history and history of songs and I really like researching and knowing about this. So I decided I’d do a history of popular music in America and Canada. It was an ambitious idea, but I thought I’ll just start and see what I can do. I had all this time because of the pandemic.
I wasn’t gigging normally and I had this program that I was giving virtually, so I got this experience of seeing the reaction of people in the programs when I would play songs, particularly older songs from the 1700s and 1800s. Their reaction and these were songs that they knew the metric for the program was it included songs that had survived that amount of time while so many others had fallen by the wayside.
So it was really Fred who got me started on this and then as I started doing this history of popular music. The word spread and other people started wanting me to do it and so I had more programs and then also people in the program would start requesting songs. So while I was already doing my research, I would start to research the songs that they asked for, and so my repertoire grew, and my understanding grew and it just kept expanding. Finding new songs from the past and it was somebody else that spurred me into doing this and I have thanked Fred for getting me started on this path.
On his path to his work in music and health
My path into this was really through two things. Well more than two things but one was simply loving music. Really enjoying it and never seeing it as a career. I never saw myself as a person who would do this full-time, but just loving, loving music. Number two, finally doing the traditional kind of career recording, releasing records, touring, that kind of pathway. The third would be this love of history. Something I’m really interested in. So those three things combined because as a songwriter, I feel like everything is building on something else. Nothing comes out of nowhere, musically or in any of the Arts.
Even if you’re completely breaking with a tradition, you’re breaking with something. You’re going in another direction, so it’s related. I find that really always helpful in my song writing, is the things you’ve heard that inspire you to write something. Working in the health field really came from someone else. And it taught me, I never thought about music and health honestly, it never occurred to me. It was just part of my life and everyone’s life, but it never occurred to me, the direct connection between music and mental health.
The more I do this, the more I understand how healing and how helpful music can be for people in all different ways, whatever kind of music you’re doing, so that’s been a a big part of it for me.
My name is Ajay Heble. I’m the director of The International Institute for Critical Studies and Improvisation, and I was the founding artistic director of the Guelph Jazz Festival (where) I served in that role from 1994 to 2016. I’m also professor of English at the University of Guelph.
It’s a big question, music and health. My sense is that music and health is a topic that hasn’t really attracted the kind of attention that it should attract, partly because I think music inhabits the social and cultural landscape in ways that remain largely uninvented. Despite this, I’ve long believed that improvisational musical practices in particular, can contribute to the development and well-being of healthy communities and in fact, that’s one of the core hypotheses that we try to test through the work we’re doing at The International Institute for Critical Studies and Improvisation.
Ajay Hable: Music and Health through the program KidsAbility
I think the example that comes to mind is the work we’ve been doing for probably about 15 years
with “KidsAbility,” which is a social service organization that runs programs for kids that have physical and developmental disabilities. And for years we’ve been bringing improvising artists into the community to work with youth from KidsAbility and those improvising artists will run series of improvising workshops that will often culminate in large scale public performances at the Guelph Jazz Festival.
So for example, we’ll shut down one of the main streets in Guelph at one of the festival’s biggest public events, that’s where these kids get to play on that stage. So it’s really quite remarkable.
And the research component is that we have our research team members, for example our graduate students, doing interviews with the kids, with the parents, with the staff, with the artist facilitators as well, and trying to track the impact that these programs are having.
The stories and anecdotes we hear are really quite remarkable about the impact. The kinds of things that people tell us. That the kids are showing self-esteem, that they’re listening in ways they didn’t listen before, they’re taking on leadership roles in front of a large audience. The kids are willing to get up in front of an audience of thousands of people and take on a leadership role by conducting the whole band for example. Often we hear from the parents that this isn’t something that they see their kids doing very often.
So I think we’re really interested in this idea that improvisation can actually be a means of empowering and animating special needs youth. And again, the research team that I’ve worked with have documented and analyzed the complex relationships between improvisational practices and their effects on, for example, socialization, wellness, self-esteem, physical coordination, and mental acuity. That’s a project that’s been running for 15 years and the impacts on the kids, as I said, are really quite … we hear amazing stories.
Ajay Heble: On how KidsAbility came to be
How it started. We received a large scale SSHRC Grant, this was in 2007. It was a SSHRC “Major Collaborative Research Initiatives” grant for a project called “Improvisation Community and Social Practice,” and the bulk of the work was community-engaged partnered research focusing on the social implications of improvised musical and creative practices.
So we already had, in this case, a group of partners that had signed on to the grant, but in the case of KidsAbility,they came on after the fact. We were just looking for a local organization that might be interested in some of the things we were able to offer in terms of working with improvising artists. And so, we had a meeting with the staff at KidsAbility and they were so enthusiastic.
I still remember that initial meeting. There were a few of us, Ellen Waterman and I, and one of our staff members Jee Burrows at the time. We met with staff at KidsAbility and they were so incredibly enthusiastic to partner with us, and they saw it as very much in keeping with their needs, and it complemented some of the kinds of programs they were offering because I gather that music wasn’t really something that they were doing at the time.
So this was something they were really thrilled to do with us, and furthermore what was really interesting as I think back on that, we wanted we had this idea of staging a public concert at the end of the workshops that the kids would do with the workshop facilitators.
So there were going to be a series of workshops that we wanted to culminate in this public performance, but we were worried. We thought “Oh, maybe the kids don’t want to do it or won’t want to do it,” and the staff said “No, no, they’re going to want to do it.” In fact, they (the kids) voted and they were totally on board. The kids wanted to go on stage. They thrived in that element. So that’s where it began, with the initial SSHRC MCIR grant.
Ajay Heble: On what his path was to work in community health and wellness and music
I think it was an indirect path that had to do with the work I was doing with the Guelph Jazz Festival. For years during the JazzFest I would bring together artists from different places, different communities, and have them improvise, and it became clear to me that there was something really special going on in that moment — where artists come together to improvise. Something that had a lot to tell us about how we negotiate difference in the community, how we communicate with one another, how we think about issues of trust and social belonging. I think this whole issue of community health and wellness, was something that became more and more evident to me as I was running the festival.
I understood fairly early on, that the work I was doing at the Jazz Festival wasn’t just about the music or the programming. It was about something much more than that. I’ve said this before it was about reinvigorating public life with the spirit of dialogue in community. I think that’s very clearly something that has an impact on issues of wellness and quality of life.
I think that was probably the path that led me to the work that I’m describing here.
My name is Arla Good. I am the co-director and chief researcher of SingWell Project.
The SingWell Project is a network of researchers, community organizations, practitioners, choirs across Canada and beyond. We’re all working towards the same goal which is to document and advocate for the benefits of group singing. In particular, we’re interested in people who have communication challenges. So the question is how can group singing support both the communication and the social well-being of these types of individuals.
I want to start by acknowledging the power of music for music’s sake and art for art’s sake, without diminishing that, I think that there’s also lots of ways in which we can use music to support well-being and health. In our particular context with SingWell, we’re interested in how we can use singing as a very accessible, scalable way to get lots of people involved. How we can use singing to support the health and well-being of usually older adults, so using it as a rehabilitation tool. Using it as a tool for getting people together for community building, for belonging, and for boosting mood.
We see the biological impact of singing, so understanding what’s happening in the body when we’re singing. It makes people feel good and that’s what, for me, music and health is.
Arla Good: On the impacts of a SingWell session on music and health
Over the last three or four years, we have been seeding choirs in different communities. So we focus on Parkinson’s, aphasia, lung disease, hearing loss and stuttering ‚and we have choirs (in which) we are tracking some of these psychosocial well-being benefits.
So a typical single study might look something like this. We would start a choir usually around 12 to 15 people, and the choir would run for about 12 sessions. We would track at the baseline and completion of the choir, and we would also track before and after a single singing session. So we’re looking at things like how they’re feeling that moment. We’re looking at some of the biological effects, so the hormones, pain thresholds, stress.
Then over the longitudinal time frame, we’re looking at feelings of social connectedness, psychological well-being. One particular project I can mention, we’re gearing up to run a study at Chigamik Community Health Center. So this will be individuals with lung disease, (they) will be prescribed from their primary care physician or self-prescribed to the choir.
We will be able to document these individuals from day one, when they start their choir, and to see what kind of effects on their psychosocial well-being, but also on their breathing. So we’ll be able to see if the choir is having an impact on their breath function.
Arla Good: On the benefits of a SingWell project on music and health
So for this particular project, we expect to see impact on breath health. We think that elements of singing including deep breathing, controlled breathing, it’s a way to help strengthen the breath control and the breath health of individuals with lung disease.
So we’re expecting to see that, but we’re also expecting to see improvements in social well-being. What happens when we bring a group of individuals together who all have lung disease? How does it feel for them all to be singing together? What is the impact on their identity? One of the quotes that actually triggered the inspiration for all of SingWell, was an individual living with Parkinson’s who started to sing in a choir for Parkinson’s. She said “I used to be someone with Parkinson’s and now I’m someone with Parkinson’s who can sing.” So this shift in the identity is what we’re really trying to document and this belonging in this new community. It’s a strength based community that breaks down stigma.
You might think someone with a breathing disorder wouldn’t be able to sing, and yet here they are singing and improving their breath health while they’re at it. So outcomes, we’re interested in breath health and psychosocial well-being.
Arla Good: What is your inspiration in doing this work with SingWell?
I’m inspired by anecdotes that I hear and it’s a very common experience to hear people say that a grandparent with dementia or with Parkinson’s who really came alive when they sang. I hear these stories and I think we all see that happening but I wanted to understand why this is happening, and to begin to document it, and create resources for people who want to be doing this kind of work.
So best practices in leading a choir like this, and to help spread the word to communities that would benefit from programming like this.
Music therapist Danielle Jakubiak: What does music and health mean to you?
My name is Danielle Jakubiak and I am a counseling therapist and a music therapist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’m in private practice, and I believe that’s all I have to say.
For me personally, a lot of the work that I do is working with adult mental health.
So I have found in my work, music helps to bring out a sense of groundedness in people’s connection to their emotional life, and that’s really really important for people who have been through things like trauma and who have a lot of anxiety. It can be something that’s like a really grounding force. It can also give them a sense of normalcy and resourcefulness when they’re feeling really destabilized in their lives. I see it as a great resource I guess.
Music therapist Danielle Jakubiak: On the use of guided imagery and music with trauma clients
I’ve been doing work in this method called “Guided Imagery and Music” for quite a number of years now.
Most recently, I did a training in something called “Resource Oriented Music and Imagery” which is kind of a departure from “Guided Imagery and Music,” but it’s really focusing on that first level of stabilization when you do trauma work. For example, that which we call resourcing — finding what is healthy and good when you’ve been through something that’s really damaging and finding that in connection with music that you already know in love.
It’s a really great intervention that can be used, particularly with trauma clients.
Music Therapist Danielle Jakubiak: Connecting through music
It was something that came out of Guided Imagery Music, so that’s a method that’s been around since the 50’s or 60’s. And it’s a really specific method that uses classical music and imagery like the client’s memories or things that are coming to their mind when they listen to this classical music.
So that’s a really specific protocol that’s been around for many years. Then one of the first proteges, I would say, of the main trainer for Guided Imagery Music decided that she wanted to do a similar thing, but using the client’s own music. So rather than the specific set of classical pieces, instead just ask the client what music that they feel connects to a specific resource or feeling inside of them. So it’s a lot more personalized and also gets past a lot of the intercultural barriers. Sometimes that can come with using specifically just classical music, which some people don’t have great relationships to, and some people have complicated relationships to, so it’s just a bit different.
I am Gilles Comeau, I am a professor at the School of Music at the University of Ottawa. I am the founding director of the Music and Health Research Institute at the University of Ottawa, and recently I became a principal researcher at the Research Institute in Mental Health at the Royal, where I am responsible for establishing a research clinic in music and mental health.
There is a lot of research that tends to demonstrate that music can have an impact on several health conditions, on well-being, on mental health. I observed in the report that was published in 2019 by the World Health Organization that approximately 40% of music research had been done with music therapists, and that the other 60% was by musicians, musician-educators, sometimes health people who had music training.
At that time, I knew there was lot of research that had been done with music therapists, that look at how their work was having an impact. And music therapists often work one-on-one, and often see themselves as health practitioners who are working towards helping individuals with certain condition. So I decided at that time to put the focus on musicians and music educators, because a lot less research has been done in that area.
They were already very much implementing their programs in health and social settings, so I wanted to be able to study what was happening and see how I could contribute with better engagement of musicians and music educators, for the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
Gilles Comeau: On the impacts of music and health and strategies for measuring these impacts
For people who have dementia, it really has an impact on their well-being and quality of life. Because we understand that music is not expected to have a healing impact on Alzheimers condition, but, really has a significant impact on well-being and quality of life. Even for people who suffer from depression and anxiety, it is also about being able to make the symptoms less disturbing, and being able to improve well-being.
So what we do is that we try to measure how it has an impact on their well-being: measure the impact on anxiety, measure the impact on depression, measure the impact on the joy / the excitement of learning new things. And we do also the standard questionnaires that are of often used to measure the various outcomes. There are special questionnaires for people with dementia. There are questionnaires for their caregivers. There are questionnaires for their anxiety level, for their depression level, on flourishing, learning new things, on joy, their quality of joy as well.
Then we also have some biomarkers that we want to use to demonstrate with the different impacts it could have. And that could be some watch that you’re wearing similar to Fitbits that, for a period of time, it shows the blood pressure, heart rate etc. So it will show if the music activity at one point in the week is having an impact on that day, or the day that follows. We will work things like that.
We work with log books on sleep pattern and the self-report on sleep, and it gives us a good indication of how it is affecting their sleep. Sometimes we can do some cortisol level with a saliva test that helps us to measure how things are improving. We also look at the movement that they’re able to do, because a lot of the program we have are music and movement. The movement that they develop is a real indication of how they perceive music and we quickly see how the quality of the movement change within a few weeks. You could also see how well they perceive.
Are they completely off music, are they getting more with music, are they more subtle / supple, so all of that shows a change that we can observe.
Gilles Comeau on his path to work in music and health
I was always passionate about teaching, and I was fascinating about how people learn.
I started to teach music when I was 16 years old, teaching piano to young people but also to little groups of students and preschoolers. I was fascinated with that aspects of teaching music and it has been a constant throughout my life. I was also always in interested in health and helping people, and in my teens I had already started to volunteer by spending time in a long-term care facility. When I came to University, I was helping with the Children’s Aid Society and working with children that were deaf and other children that had severe cases of autism. That was always part of it and then throughout my career at the University, I did a lot of interdisciplinary work with other researchers. It was always part of the work I did to combine those aspects. And looking at learning, looking at teaching, looking at various groups, then looking at musicians health, physical and mental health.
Eventually, I brought together a little bit of all those experiences and passion. I’m bringing back my training in music education and Delcroze, eurythmics, music and movement, or training with percussion improvisations. I’m bringing that back, but into health and social context.
I’m bringing back my interest with those groups of people and I’m also bringing my interest in research and in multidisciplinary research. I’ve had over two decades of experience working in different research culture because every discipline has its own way approaching research.
So it’s very familiar (to) me and I was able to group people from various fields of research to put everything together for that work in music and health.
Music Therapist Rebecca McDonald on ‘What is music and Health?’
My name is Rebecca McDonald. I’m a music therapist who is currently living in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, but I’m originally from Peterborough, Ontario.
I think when I was thinking about how to answer this question, it’s a lot about how I look at what health is. I think in music therapy especially, we’re looking at health as not just those specific physical things. A lot of it is the social determinants of health and people’s mental health, and how that all contributes to someone’s personal health. I think that’s really important and I think for myself too.
I use music a lot for my own mental health and that’s a very common experience for lots of people. I think for me, music and health are very linked and I think it kind of contributes to that looking of health, meaning the whole person.
Music Therapist Rebecca McDonald: On music and health in palliative care
Music therapy as a discipline, I think is at the intersection of music and health, especially where I work in a healthcare setting. I work in a hospital so it’s the use of music in this healthcare setting. The project that I’m involved in is in an Inpatient Palliative Care Unit, as well as in an Outpatient Oncology Clinic, and other areas within the hospital.
So this project came about when I was an intern at the same hospital in which I currently work and this hospital has had music therapists for over 10 years. This job is only funded by certain units and it came out of seeing how well music therapy was received at this hospital and the need for it, and wanting to expand the program that was already there. I had a special interest in working in palliative care, so I put together a pilot project for this unit so that we could expand and have someone who was dedicated to that unit with those patients.
We did the pilot project about a year and a half ago and it was six months. It’s been extended since we were gathering data and gathering surveys from people and getting people’s firsthand experience of what the music therapy meant to them, so that we could show people why it’s a necessary service in healthcare.
Music Therapist Rebecca McDonald on how service for music and health are accessed in palliative care
A lot of music therapists operate on a referral basis when they’re responsible for like a large population of patients. Luckily for me, the position that I have right now, the unit is small with only six to eight patients at a time.
So, I’m able to offer it (the program) to everyone and I like being able to do that because then it puts it in the patients hands and they get to decide if they would like to access the service. And if they want to (access the service), that’s great, and if they say “no, thank you” then that’s great too. It’s whatever they need.
I go in, introduce myself, explain what it is that I do, and leave it with the patient and their families to say if they would like the service or not. It’s not something extra for which they need to pay. It’s funded by the hospital, so there’s no burden of them having to pay. It’s just another service with all of the other things that are offered in the hospital.
Music Therapist Rebecca McDonald: On the impacts of music and health
I think, in palliative care especially, it is difficult to talk about quality of life, but I think the music therapy contributed to giving these people what we’d call “a good death”. Where they feel supported and have their needs met and they have an experience.
When the healthcare system is very overburdened and the nurses are so busy and they have so much on their plate, music therapy is a time when I’m there just for them. It’s just for us to connect with music and talk about what they’re feeling, and experience the music that they love, and talk about their lives. I got to hear lots of lovely stories and one of the things that was really great to see, is the way that it helped families connect because it can be a really hard thing.
Someone’s sitting with their family member and it’s very emotional for days and days, and this gives them something different over which to connect. A lot of reminiscing comes from when one sings a song and they go “oh do you remember when we had that party” for so and so’s anniversary, and remember this funny thing happened. They just start to talk about things like that (which bring) relaxation and that emotional support to the patient.
One of the work environments that appeals to me the most is palliative care, so I had the chance recently with the society for arts in healthcare, to work to bring music to people at the end of their lives.
It’s really a special context because that there is a need (and) music allows access to the world of emotions at a period of life (the end of life) which is very, very emotionally charged at this level.
So I have the impression that what I see is that it allows a kind of pacification, a calm. Obviously, you have to be very, let’s say, attentive as an artist at repertoire level. I’m an opera singer so for sure I will not sing with a big voice. All the art of music mediation is to feel who we are in front of. What is this person experiencing.
So palliative care, yes, it’s something that has attracted me for many years. I mean, I sang for my mother at the end of her life, those were unforgettable moments. I have sung in contexts like this several times during my studies, and I find that, as an artist, it is a process that is bidirectional. It nourishes the people to whom we offer it, to whom we allow to express things that cannot express ourselves in words through our music. But, it also nourishes the artist who presents who is there (the mediating artist) who sees himself confronted with a situation in which there is no possible fake. We can’t pretend. You absolutely have to be in the truth of the moment. You have to be in the exchange sincere, and it’s very nourishing for an artist. So, that’s it. This is something that really matters to me.
The Impacts of Music on Health
Yes. In the case of concerts (let’s say) more organized to which we are able to invite people, family, significant people, it’s obvious that there is preparation. A choice of the repertoire must be made. Just in this process, the family in connection with the person who is nearing the end of life, the choice of repertoire, it allows a whole return on the themes of life, so there is a kind of phenomenon of life assessment which can be done through the construction of a mini concert, a mini concert program.
The works will chosen according to certain life priorities. There is definitely a transmission. A cultural heritage that is bequeathed, which gives the family a feeling of cohesion that they really need in those moments. So, in terms of family cohesion, it can contribute to a cultural inheritance. Then, for the person themselves who is at the end of its life, it is certain that the benefits are documented at various levels of health: good heart rate, pressure, anxiety level, all that. It is obvious that there is marked improvement.
There can be also emotional reactions (let’s say) of catharsis that occurs. A kind of access to emotions that once would have been turned away. So that is very beneficial. What we notice is that there is also a change in the person’s breathing.
It’s even happened for me to sing for people near end of life who were in a coma or unconsciousness, and we even note in these cases, a change in breathing levels.
What was your path to working in Music and Health?
For me, music is an act of communication, even if I practice alone in my living room. It’s in prediction of one day being able to deliver it.
Music is an act, by definition, that is communal. Singing in particular is one of these modes of ancestral communication which we relates to really, really far back in evolution. As such, it amounts to when it stimulates a part of us like that, a mode of communication or ancestral meeting, there is really something very special happening.
I think that’s what got me into health. I started singing in the little church choir in my village, so there was from the beginning of my musical experience, an aspect of family. There was my uncle who was there, there was my aunt.We knew everyone. There was an aspect of reunion, an aspect of family.
Then when we work in the health field, and we talk about inclusion. We’re talking about bringing back music, bringing music to people who have less access to it. It’s work with autistic people, for working with people who live with functional limitations, (for) working with people in diverse environments and, in this case, we were talking about palliative care.
We not only bring the music, because music is accessible to anyone on your phone at any time, but we bring live music.
Live music, the vibration of air particles produced by an instrument in person. With that, we have something that really anchors us in the community.
What does Music and Health mean to you?
Hello, my name is Pierre Rancour. I’m a baritone, a trained opera singer, also a guitarist and cultural mediator.
Music and health. For me, music is health because in my personal practice, my rehearsals, my singing, these are always moments of joy, of happiness, moments of reconnection to myself, moments of vitalization, but at the same time of calm, of expansion, of moments when I feel complete. So I think that it’s certain that all of this of which we’re talking about, is about quality of life. We are talking about increasing our own quality of life as a performer. That the personal practice is synonymous with pleasure, then this inspires us when we do music in cultural and health contexts.
It makes us want to share this joy there. This physical, emotional, and mental well-being becomes contagious. And in my experience in different healthcare settings that I’ve worked in with music, that’s really what happens. It is because there is a quality of energy, a vibration when we make music that we are sharing and transmitting to others. So the
the way we pose our voice, the way we come into contact, the opening that we really feel — almost at the level of the solar plexus. Something in the order of confidence.
There are many benefits that I notice in all the environments in which I have worked with music. It’s obvious. Research proves them. The research is there to document all these benefits of music, but I see it on the ground. I see that this is a service that can easily be minimized (culture, music, the human contact). That’s what we do. It’s about coming into contact, it’s about vibrating together. But this is not to be minimized, on the contrary, it’s something exceptionally powerful.
My name is Louise Campbell. I am a musician and artist, and I do a lot of work with people in many different sectors, of which one is health. The work that I’ve done in health really ranges depending on what people are looking for. I’ve worked with people who have severe physical disabilities, also with many kids who are neurodivergent, as well as people who have a diagnoses of fairly serious neurodegenerative diseases amongst other things.
For me, music and health is in part what music brings to everyone. It’s the fun of making music, of being creative, of connecting with others, and the joy of being in community with people. When it comes to be more specific to health, I think it depends on what people are looking for and it can mean many different things to different people. So someone might be interested in addressing a physical ailment that they have, somebody else might be more looking for the psychosocial connections. So it really depends on how we’re going to use music in the context of health.
Music and health at the C.A.R.E. Centre
One of my favorite groups of people to work with are the people at the C.A.R.E. Center.
The C.A.R.E. Center is a center for adults with severe physical disabilities, and I have had the luck of being able to work with them over multiple years. I was initially invited to work with the C.A.R.E. Center by the director Olivia Quesnel. It’s very specific for her that when I go in, it’s to support mental health and to really support fun. It’s interesting when I go in, because I’ve gotten to know people a little bit better there, and I can see that absolutely the mental health and well-being is very much supported by what music and the Arts has to offer — in terms of engagement, connection with other people, learning things that are new, finding new ways to understand one’s own experience, and share that with other people.
It can also definitely help with the physical side of things as well. There’s this one person who is a client at the C.A.R.E. Center. He is in a wheelchair and when I first met him, he was fairly upright in his wheelchair. Over the years, I’ve seen that he starts to get a little bit more slumped. He’s just a lovely sweet person who has no trouble actually connecting with other people, but it’s more this kind of physicality that starts to close his body down a little bit more that makes it harder for him to reach out to other people. So, in one of our projects we were building instruments, and when I do these kinds of projects, I leave a lot of room open for other people. We gathered all kinds of materials from this recycle bin, lots of different things that were around that just could be potential sound makers, and this man started to build his instrument. As it turned out, this instrument was all kinds of things that were hung from a bar that was just above him.
So he made this beautiful kind of chime instrument that led him to be going up all the time. I spoke with his physiotherapist afterwards. She was really amazed because here was this man going up all the time doing what she was trying to get him to do in physio, and yet he was doing it of his own accord and for far longer than the physio sessions were going to happen. And he was having a great time and was able to share this instrument with other people who could also play in this up and more open position. So for me, the C.A.R.E. Center is a place where it really hits on all of the various different ways that we can contribute to people’s health and wellbeing.
As part of the Music in Incarceration & Rehabilitation Resource, Geremia Lodi describes his experience working with former inmates in a transition community program, the possible benefits of implementing music programs in complex situations such as incarceration and rehabilitation, and various issues related to self-care.
Hello, my name is Geremia Lodi. I am a musician and a music educator. My purpose in life is to use music to create a connection between people, while at the same time using this connection to create musical sounds and more personal and intimate sounds together.
My favorite tool to make music is body music — body percussion, singing, and beatboxing in other words. Everything that we can do directly with our body and maybe without an instrument. I like it because it allows every participant in my workshop to directly bring the music that is in their body, in their experience. It’s an accessible approach to music.
My experience with former inmates is quite limited and relates to my collaboration with communities based in Montreal, especially the initiative Open Door. Open Door is a weekly meeting and is open to former inmates, sometimes also to current inmates on a permit, to encounter people of the community and create a new connection to support their integration in society.
When I offered a workshop for this association, I encountered a group really curious for what I had to offer, and really ready to take the chance to have a moment of fun together, a moment of interaction.
The activity that I remember them enjoying the most was one of my activities called Silent Rhythms. I request each participant to perform a silent and repetitive movement, but I ask to the other participants if they, by listening with their eyes, can hear something in their imagination. If imagination can produce a sound. Guided by this movement, and most of the time people can, in fact, produce something that responds to that movement.
In the second round of people performing a movement, the people opposite in the circle to the mover give voice. We sing the movement that we hear in our imagination. People commented that it was really comforting to hear your movement through the voice of somebody else. Hearing somebody giving voice to your body, it’s a way of looking, it’s a way of
paying attention to the other but brings to the surface that web of reciprocity that connects everybody in a group, but which is not always evident. It’s not always easy to perceive and to feel. I think that that is also a hint of one of the ways that music can be of benefit to people that experience penitentiary: to feel this reconnection to others in a different way.
So what can a music program bring to inmates or former inmates?
The first thing is aliveness. Consider someone who is facing a guilt, who is coming to terms with a pain that they might have caused, and difficult stories. All of these come with a really heavy burden to carry and upon which to elaborate.
In order to live this process, an individual needs to be able to connect back to the part of themselves that is a master life. The part that can laugh, that can feel a joy, that can feel pleasure is fundamental to face a demanding process like the one that inmates are facing.
So, music can bring aliveness in the form of passion, of grooving, of playing. Playing in the sense of playing an instrument, but also having fun, which is really important. Second, a music program can offer a way to connect to oneself and a way to connect to others. As I was saying, every person sentenced to penitentiary has probably the need to gain ownership over their own story, elaborating what happened in the chain of events that brought them there, and at the same time finding again their very own subjectivity. Their own voice among the many voices that sentenced them and to label them to their position. It’s important to find full agency by themselves.
Music and support music programs can help to regain a sense of self. A sense of intimacy, the sense of individuality, which is fundamental for the process of elaboration of the guilt and of gaining ownership. And finally, when most former inmates are met, they carry a strong protective shell, which is a natural response to hostile environment, such as the one of the penitentiary.
A music program within a penitentiary, after a process, or at the time of detention can offer the participants a safe space, a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood, where mutual recognition can happen. Where reciprocity and normality, a normal sense of warmth, of human warmth can be installed, which can greatly support an experience of humanity. That can be healing, in relation to the more institutionalized and more cold experience of life as experienced in a penitentiary.
Self-care before, during, and after the project. My own experience about the self-care doesn’t come from working in the penitentiary, but more working in an urban community. Which is a really different context but what is in common with the penitentiary is that as an educator you will find yourself witnessing some really challenging life experiences. A second element in common is that these are experiences to which most people in society are not really exposed, which will make you feel a bit more alone at some point. And we’ll talk about it in a minute.
So the first thing that comes to mind about self-care is to make sure to be paid enough for this contract. Which may sound funny but what I think is that when working such a project, you need to make sure to allocate enough time for the briefing, for elaborating what you’re experiencing, and to be fairly paid so that you can pay your rent without the pressure of looking for that extra contract to feel more safe, this will be really important. It’s not a matter of greediness, it’s just a matter of giving yourself the time for elaborating. Of course, this is also the second element, considering that you will need time for elaboration.
The third element is considering the resources in the association or the institution you will be working for in terms of partnership. Which are the other indicators and which is the relationship you will be established with them. Will it be a partnership also on debriefing and elaborating the project together or not. How much time will you’ll be spending? The other person doing this job? These are important things to know. What is the basis of this collaboration, and also what is your role in carrying out this project. What is expected from you, and how your role fits in the same overarching structure on which you’re an actor, but not fully in charge of all the responsibility of the project. It is really important to have clarity around your world. To be able to place yourself in that project.
Another element is, before the end of the project, to analyze your network, your own personal network which are the friends that can offer a good listening partner, but also qualified or competent listening. As I was saying, in my own experience when I was living in the North, I felt some resistance to share certain stories to my friends about what I witnessed. It felt somewhat disrespectful to bring up certain stories without offering a complete context in which that story took place. And this context is really difficult to provide sometimes.
It is really challenging to tell. There are so many things that I still couldn’t name or couldn’t figure out myself to explain the context I was living in, but it was different if I was talking to somebody who actually lived the same experience and had already a sense of what I was talking about. So, it’s really good to verify if you already have somebody in your network with similar experiences that could be a good partner to debrief, to have a listening ear.
Finally, and especially if it’s a long-term project, it’s really good to read inspiring experiences of other people that work in a similar context and who faced similar problems. It’s really soothing at times to make yourself be accompanied in this way, by somebody else that went through the same path. Actually, there will be more with what they wanted to share and sometimes also a really good laugh. And you will be facing some really hard life experiences and you need, in the week, to reconnect to your own vitality, to whatever makes you feel really alive.
For the inmates, they need to connect to what is really alive for them, what is really fun and joyful and you will need to do the same for yourself each week. A colleague in the north told me that you need to make sure to be happy at least three times a day. It’s funny but I think it’s such a precious suggestion. To be sure to connect to your life energy, to the most vital part of you each week, and if possible three times a day. Because that will be so important for you to be in a in a context that is difficult, to be full strength.
Don’t supercharge yourself with the dark part because we really need the lively part in order to to be in this context. Don’t be afraid to be light and to be funny.
Why carry out a project in a penitentiary, or in another complex place? Maybe it sounds like a funny question to ask but I wanted to do this tutorial and I was inspired by a sentence of Genostrada, the founder of ‘Emergency Association’ that provided medical support in war zones. He mentioned that people wanted him to say that he was doing what he was doing as a sergeant, in such context, because it was a good cause because it was moved by a really good intention. But he wasn’t shy to say that he was doing that simply because he really enjoyed doing it. That’s the reason.
Then we rephrased it in a different way, using a sentence by Lila Watson that really inspired me at the time. Lila Watson says, “If you have come to help me, you’re wasting time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound to mine, let’s work together.” I think this sentence was really of help for me to place myself, and in a context where I faced people facing really difficult situations but finding a way that’s of strong resilience and a strong personal capacity.
In a way, it helped me to this awareness to keep a balance, feeling responsible for myself, responsible who I was, responsible for my professionality, but also realizing that this responsibility entailed to not take over responsibilities of other people. In fact, doing so would have would have deprived these people of their own responsibility, of their own capacity.
And always remembering the reason why I was there, but it was my own reason. These allow me to remember that each person has his life or her life story, and better acknowledging our uniqueness is and our difference is the basis for allowing this encounter where each can offer the other person something important for our own path as human beings.
Thank you.
For more info on Geremia Lodi, see their artist profile HERE. For a taste of what Geremia Lodi does, see the following projects featured on the PCM Hub:
As part of the Music in Incarceration & Rehabilitation Resource, Moe Clark describes her experience as a two-spirit Métis artist making music with at-risk Indigenous youth in lockdown and carcéral settings. She speaks to cultural sensitivities and the importance of connecting with elders when working with Indigenous youth.
(Introduction in nēhiyawēwin — Plains Cree language)
Hello everyone, I’ve just introduced myself in nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree language), one of my ancestral languages. I’m a two-spirit Métis artist originally from Calgary, Alberta and treaty seven, but I currently reside in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang on the unseated territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka, the Mohawk people here in Montreal.
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist. I focus primarily on spoken word poetry, song creation, working with indigenous languages, intergenerational and intercultural collaborative practices and processes. I like to center land-based practices and approaches in the work I do, whether to be working actually on the land, or working with the land of our bodies and our territories, as tools for decolonization, self-determination, and collective co-creation.
I frame my work around the medicine wheel, drawing from Métis-Cree worldview, looking at the holism of the body, the person, the spirit, and the mind. I like to begin from a place of muscasawin, which is a nēhiyawēwin term which refers to belonging, finding one’s place within the circle. A lot of the work I do frames around the circle, looking at how we can approach practices from an equal place of belonging, of storytelling, of community, and orienting ourselves as both teacher and student. So we’ve all got something to learn, we’ve all got something to teach.
As one of my late elders Bob Smoker always says “I’m gonna need you, as much as you’re gonna need me”. This is really central to the work I do in and outside of lockdown and incarceral settings. I began working in lockdown facilities through a local literary arts organization in Montreal, as part of a writing and poetry workshop. These sessions ran for 10 weeks where I would go to the location once a week and I would work collaboratively with the existing teacher or pedagogical specialist and a group of at-risk indigenous youth. The thing that felt really successful about these workshops was that there was consistency, in that it wasn’t just a one-time event. It was recurring so it helped me to establish trust and make bonds with the students over the course of those 10 weeks. It helped me to identify the needs of the students, their capacities, abilities and slowly create a space where more openness and more understanding of my work and practices could be embodied and internalized for the students, so that they could actually make some of the tools and techniques that I was bringing to them their own.
Hi everyone. My name is Moe Clark. I’m a two-spirit Métis multi-disciplinary artist and I’d like to share a little bit about the value and importance of short-term projects within lockdown and incarceral settings, working with at-risk underage indigenous youth.
So for me these workshops began through a local literary organization who acted as a host to connect me as a poet-artist-vocalist with a local facility here in Montreal. I want to maintain anonymity so I will not express or name any of the organizations or institutions personally. I will say that these sessions were incredibly valuable and dynamic in that I would attend the facility one hour per week, over the course of 10 weeks. I would work collaboratively with the host teacher with a group of anywhere between 5 and 10 youth. To begin the projects, I undertook training through a local family services organization to explore sensitivity notions of trauma and how to collaborate and work with at-risk youth who might be in precarious situations.
In addition to this, I call on my own toolkit and bundle which includes experience with somatic experiencing which is an embodied approach to therapy and a trauma-informed lens. It explores and looks at the body as a site of memory and creativity, as well as a site of a lot of experiences. I also draw from practices of medicine wheel teachings, which really looks at the four directions and the wholism of the person that we have a physical, a mental, a spiritual, and an emotional body. So really examining and exploring these four bodies as essential aspects to who and how we are in the world. I also draw from experiences of over 20 years of creative facilitation, in and outside of indigenous communities, with at-risk youth, with youth with disabilities, and intergenerational and intercultural collaboration.
Throughout the course of these 10 sessions, we explored different tools and techniques of creative writing and often worked from prompts from other indigenous authors and creators and musicians. Whenever possible I tried to use tools and prompts that incorporated indigenous language and culturally specific framings that were specific to the youth I was working with.
I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about being indigenous. I have my own experiences as a Métis artist who grew up in the suburbs of Calgary and currently lives in Tiohtià:ke in Montreal, but being able to draw from a toolkit of many different indigenous authors, writers, and musicians helped me to create more accessibility and inclusivity for the youth I was working with.
One really valuable tool during the workshops was collective creative writing and collective songwriting. This gave youth the opportunity to voice their ideas and their stories, and to build relationships with one another, without the necessity of having to be literate, having to have good writing skills, and they were able to laugh. They were able to make different sounds.
They were able to mimic and explore different sounds from their landscapes where they were raised, and where they grew up, and where they had currently been taken out of, in order to rehabilitate in a lockdown facility in an urban setting. To conclude these 10 workshops, we created a chat book and this chat book was acknowledged and celebrated and each student left with their own copy of it as a keepsake and as a memoir when they left the facility and continued on in their lives. So that’s it for short-term projects in lockdown and incarcerated situations.
Hi everyone. My name is Moe and I am a two-spirit multi-disciplinary metis artist. I’d like to talk now about cultural sensitivities and protocols when working with incarcerated youth,
specifically indigenous youth as a Métis artist and creator. I’ve worked extensively with indigenous communities folks coming from different nations, different walks of life, different personal and collective histories.
I think, first and foremost, what’s important to note and what’s important to do your homework on, is what are some of the historical systemic and cultural notions that have led to the current situation of the youth or the community you’re working with. So I really like to examine and look closely at the history and impacts of residential schools, on the history and impact of contact in different communities. So, when did settler communities come into Indigenous communities and how has that impacted the cultural continuum, language continuum, and traditional land-based practices of that community. And I like to bring these notions into the work so that I can examine and explore, and also facilitate from a place that is more knowledgeable, and more aware and culturally sensitive to what the participants might be experiencing, and how those experiences have been informed and impacted because of systemic situations and colonization. So that’s step one.
Step two is also looking at an understanding that each indigenous people and each indigenous nation have different cultural contexts, different languages, and different practices of relating, of expressing, of communicating. And this type of process is one that as you continue to work in the community, you become familiar and you get to know and you build relationships with the communities.
So I think that’s really the most important not to make assumptions, to come with as much information as you can, and to maintain a level of curiosity and openness to learning about and learning from the communities you’re working with.
In addition to this, I always ensure that I am working with a council of elders, of community, people that I know and I’ve built trusting relationships with so that whatever I take with me when I leave those workshops, I can process and work through with the support and cultural support of elders. So this might include working with plant medicines, working with different healing tools. So that whatever I might have picked up during the workshops, whatever traumas and challenges might have been shared or expressed, I also have a method and a process of working through those difficulties. And in relationship and in conversation with elders and counsel, whether that be other arts facilitators, other teachers, I’m also able to speak to and to process some of the challenges that have come up, some of the things where I didn’t necessarily know how to respond, to develop and further my toolkit to be a better ally and a better advocate for the needs of the students and the participants I’m working with.
Hi everyone. My name is Moe and I am a two-spirit multi-disciplinary metis artist. I’d like to talk now about cultural sensitivities and protocols when working with incarcerated youth, specifically indigenous youth as a Métis artist and creator. I’ve worked extensively with indigenous communities folks coming from different nations, different walks of life, different personal and collective histories.
I think, first and foremost, what’s important to note and what’s important to do your homework on, is what are some of the historical systemic and cultural notions that have led to the current situation of the youth or the community you’re working with. So I really like to examine and look closely at the history and impacts of residential schools, on the history and impact of contact in different communities. So, when did settler communities come into Indigenous communities and how has that impacted the cultural continuum, language continuum, and traditional land-based practices of that community. And I like to bring these notions into the work so that I can examine and explore, and also facilitate from a place that is more knowledgeable, and more aware and culturally sensitive to what the participants might be experiencing, and how those experiences have been informed and impacted because of systemic situations and colonization. So that’s step one.
Step two is also looking at an understanding that each indigenous people and each indigenous nation have different cultural contexts, different languages, and different practices of relating, of expressing, of communicating. And this type of process is one that as you continue to work in the community, you become familiar and you get to know and you build relationships with the communities.
So I think that’s really the most important not to make assumptions, to come with as much information as you can, and to maintain a level of curiosity and openness to learning about and learning from the communities you’re working with.
In addition to this, I always ensure that I am working with a council of elders, of community, people that I know and I’ve built trusting relationships with so that whatever I take with me when I leave those workshops, I can process and work through with the support and cultural support of elders. So this might include working with plant medicines, working with different healing tools. So that whatever I might have picked up during the workshops, whatever traumas and challenges might have been shared or expressed, I also have a method and a process of working through those difficulties. And in relationship and in conversation with elders and counsel, whether that be other arts facilitators, other teachers, I’m also able to speak to and to process some of the challenges that have come up, some of the things where I didn’t necessarily know how to respond, to develop and further my toolkit to be a better ally and a better advocate for the needs of the students and the participants I’m working with.
For more info on Moe Clark, see their artist profile HERE. For a taste of what Moe Clark does, see the following project featured on the PCM Hub:
As part of the Music in Incarceration & Rehabilitation Resource, Hugh Chris Brown describes his experience in making music in his program Pros & Cons and it’s origins, the efficacy of music in prisons, what making music brought him and the inmates, and self-care practices he uses to sustain himself in this work.
Hi, my name is Hugh Christopher Brown. I identify as he/him, always open to suggestions for improvement. My experience with incarceration and rehab has stemmed solely from a music program that I developed called the “Pros and Cons” music program.
Initially, it was a response to the closing of the agricultural programs in prisons, a very highly successful program that was being shut down. As a musician, I just thought “Oh I’ll get inside and do what I know how to do and do something positive in there”. Because I didn’t feel that a benefit for incarcerated people or offenders was actually going to work, I realized at that time that we were dealing with a vulnerable population. They were vulnerable because they had perpetrated harm to others, which is a hard thing for people to get their heads around. Over the course of the last 10 years, it’s grown to multiple institutions. It’s now a national charity and it’s gone from songwriting workshops to building recording studios in prisons and releasing the recordings that are made by the inmates that are then linked to charitable pursuits of the perpetrator’s choice. So it’s a model of restorative justice and a way of harnessing people’s time inside of sentences in a fruitful way.
My first steps to getting inside were through building relationships, in my case, with Kate Johnson who was a prison chaplain and made those first workshops possible. Following that, it was about building relationships with inmates themselves asking them what was working, getting their advice. I always thought I would build a program and then give it to Corrections but both inmates and Corrections officials themselves said no. This is working because it’s independent and people are coming in of their own volition.
Further relationships started being built with programming officers and the local Regional Deputy commissioner’s office, which was invaluable. To this day, I would say communication and relationships are primary. I’ve also been mentored by people who’ve done work in prisons for years and in different aspects, everythone from correctional officers to people coming running wellness and health activities.
There’s a lot to learn and a lot of people have already done those basic steps, so learn from them.
Okay, I’m just going to speak a little bit now on the efficacy and purpose of music, and, I would say, the arts in general in incarcerated populations.
One of the things that’s very difficult is the identification with criminality, both as a stigmatizing factor, and then as a means of self-defense inside. What I have noticed is folks coming into groups, either recording or singing, will be reticent to share. To literally open their mouths. Then all of a sudden you’re participating in music and it’s attractive. And music is a temporal art. You have no other alternative but to be present, and that present tense as painful as it is, music and art is an emotional platform which can help ease that challenge. I have seen it multiple times where folks go from being totally reclusive to completely enthusiastic, because once they’ve crossed that threshold, they want to share that experience with others.
It’s also giving people the reins to their own lives. Music is something that they can work on privately. It’s not ordained or judged by others primarily, although they will ask me quite often. They just want me to treat them like any other professional musician, which I do. The purpose of this project keeps changing and expanding. At first, it was a response to the cancellation not only of the Agricultural programs, but the modification of the chaplaincy and the cancellation, in some cases, of the culinary programs.
And so, it was filling a void. Now, what it’s doing a decade in, is employing people on the outside, both in music, engineering, specific tasks, but also sometimes in community organizing. I’m bringing inmates back inside to work with currently incarcerated people because that incarceration at that moment goes from being a liability to an asset. So I, as a musician, can do a lot of work when I bring in someone who’s been inside. Merely by their presence, they’re doing work that I can’t necessarily do. So the purpose has expanded as a way of gleaning an employable aspect out of the experience of incarceration. Hopefully that expands for us as the program expands, now that we’re a national charity. That’s one of the aspects that the music might serve someone when they get out of prison in terms of re-integration. The other way that it definitely serves is just in socializing people while they’re inside.
The other way that it definitely serves is just in socializing people while they’re inside. Incarcerated populations can be very isolated, very encamped, and the music just naturally becomes ecumenical. It becomes shared across different cultures. We’ve had an experience where in one case, a white inmate was making music with rappers and he was saying, “If my family knew I was in the room with black people they would disown me”. As you know, not a shocking statement, and also something that then led to weeks of conversation, and I would think would affect that person’s attitude when they’re on the outside.
By taking care of music together and by creating a proper form of interdependence, I think we witness what other people are useful for. We build trust and we realize that a lot is possible when we have that trust. And that trust that has often been denied to folks who end up in prison long before their incarceration. Some of the cultural sensitivities I’d say that we have to recognize are from the general population. I’ll start with the stigmatization of incarceration and scapegoating thereby, because it’s easy to pick on someone who’s already been fingered for doing harm and then triggering people who are traumatized. If they meet someone who’s a perpetrator of a crime that they’ve suffered very often, it’s going to be triggering for them.
So these are challenges that we’re meeting in our program as folks graduate, and as we integrate them. The different ways of addressing this, I would say, immediately stem from communications and then just following the legal codes as they are. You know, it’s called Corrections. It’s not called ‘draw and quarter in the public square and throw people away’. We work under the tenant that everyone is responsible and no one is disposable. Some people can’t hang with that and you don’t want to push buttons. However, exposing those kind of prejudices is what we need to do as a civil society if we’re going to advance. And we have gone from drawing and quartering people in the public square to incarceration. Hopefully we can get a little more perfect constantly.
The other cultural sensitivity, of course on the part of incarcerated folks, is imposter syndrome. When people start taking responsibility for themselves, it’s scary. I mean you’ve been depending on an institution almost the way we are when we’re in school, and so how that is met is by actually being vulnerable yourself.
I, as an artist, have to relate all the time. “Oh yeah I was scared shitless that time on stage”, or this is what I learned from this person, or when I bring in people to do workshops and an incarcerated person will say to me, “Wow I learned a lot that day” … I learned a lot that day! So regulating and putting yourself on the same level as people really helps to address that state of imposter syndrome which can be debilitating.
It can be debilitating for all of us, let alone people who have served time.
In terms of the ethics around content creation and what happens to it, I can speak specifically to our model, which is anonymity in release of the music. So what that does well is it protects the perpetrator. It also protects victims who could be traumatized if they saw someone’s name tied to a piece of work which might have been very earnestly made, but still it wouldn’t matter to them. So anonymity, it protects both sides from being targeted and at the same time you give creative control and ownership to the creator.
So we work on publishing, on teaching people how to really regulate and control their own content. They can always do versions when they’re on the outside. The stuff that they make for the program is put out free of charge, tied to charitable works. So it’s a way of harnessing the time that people are spending inside in a very productive way. Using that time to benefit others, and keeping it clear of the commercialization, and any other thing that might kind of hotly become under criticism.
I guess the other thing to talk about is so you know why I’m doing this. I saw the agricultural programs being destroyed that had a 0.1 % recidivism rate, meaning no one who went through those programs were reoffending. And I started to understand the reasons why were because they were looking to load prisons, and break something, and rationalize privatization. It just seemed so cynical and dark to me that I just needed to become engaged and involved. Music is one of my principal engagements with the world, so that’s what I had to offer. I think very quickly it became evident to me how important music is, when I saw it create so much energy. And there’s lots of stories of people being reunited with their families through this work, and a growing concern for each other in incarcerated states.
People have been saying to me when they’re about to go and get parole, “Oh I don’t want to leave until this project’s finished” or “Are you going to stay here because this was very important to my friend who’s still involved here.” And just that notion that they’re thinking in a outside method to me is a portion of freedom that this work is affording the individual by their own work. And what I consider success is when I see that. There’s two or three people who have been with this program a long time that at the end of the day, if it was only about those three people, the decade of work has been worth it. It’s estimated that over a thousand have gone through our program. We’re looking to expand and nationalize currently.
That will be great. The success is really, really personal and very individual, and the amount that I’ve learned doing this has deepened and reignited my relationship to music and myself.
All of this work is deeply emotional. We’re very keen into the experience of others, so it takes a great deal of self-care. Some of the things that I practice are meditation.
I personally sit an hour a day. I find that’s very, very helpful for me to discern what my role is with others. When you’re facing folks who have had a rough go, the seduction is the feeling that you can fix. That’s not really what we’re here for. We’re just here to abide and present another option, and art can help make that attractive. And if you can get out of that ego mentality that you’re fixing or helping, again, putting yourself on the same level as everyone else, that’s good self-care. It’s kind of letting yourself off the hook of responsibility that way, and I’d say again, making yourself vulnerable. It’s healthy. It can be scary but it’s the only way I know how to do it. And 10 years in, I’ve had experiences where I’ve done therapeutic work, plant medicines, wellness work, the prison work never comes up within that context as something that is taxing me. Quite the opposite, it actually is giving to me.
It might not be what you’d expect, but when you’re in a place where every moment of attention is appreciated, it is very, very, very positive and you just have to divorce yourself from that ego side — of the corrector or fixer.
You’re not that, you’re just a friend really.
For more info on Hugh Chris Brown, see their artist profile HERE. For a taste of what Hugh Chris Brown does, see the following projects featured on the PCM Hub:
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industrys standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
Step 2
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industrys standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industrys standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
×
Étape 1
Lorem Ipsum est tout simplement un texte factice de l'industrie de l'impression et de la composition. Lorem Ipsum est le texte factice standard de l'industrie depuis les années 1500, quand un imprimeur inconnu a pris une cuisine de type et l'a brouillé pour faire un livre de spécimen de type. Il a survécu non seulement à cinq siècles, mais aussi au saut dans la composition électronique, demeurant essentiellement inchangé.
Étape 2
Lorem Ipsum est tout simplement un texte factice de l'industrie de l'impression et de la composition. Lorem Ipsum est le texte factice standard de l'industrie depuis les années 1500, quand un imprimeur inconnu a pris une cuisine de type et l'a brouillé pour faire un livre de spécimen de type. Il a survécu non seulement à cinq siècles, mais aussi au saut dans la composition électronique, demeurant essentiellement inchangé.
Lorem Ipsum est tout simplement un texte factice de l'industrie de l'impression et de la composition. Lorem Ipsum est le texte factice standard de l'industrie depuis les années 1500, quand un imprimeur inconnu a pris une cuisine de type et l'a brouillé pour faire un livre de spécimen de type. Il a survécu non seulement à cinq siècles, mais aussi au saut dans la composition électronique, demeurant essentiellement inchangé.
