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Peo­ple across the ages have looked up at the night sky and seen sto­ries, fables and myths in the stars. Inspired by music, this activ­i­ty invites par­tic­i­pants of all ages to cre­ate their own con­stel­la­tions and tell their own sto­ries of the night sky.

Mate­ri­als:

White cof­fee fil­ters (3 per star chart)
Black per­ma­nent marker
Col­ored wash­able mark­ers (no black and brown)
Spray bot­tle (with water)
Pencil

Instruc­tions for mak­ing an imag­i­nary star chart:

Lis­ten to a piece of music from Dark Sky Pre­serve, an album and book by Ian Fer­ri­er, Louise Camp­bell and Sarah Beth Goncar­o­va that explores the ways in which we con­nect and dis­con­nect from our­selves and oth­ers in our search for our place in the universe.

Step 1:

On a sur­face that can get wet, flat­ten three cof­fee fil­ters on top of each oth­er. Draw dots on the top cof­fee fil­ter using black per­ma­nent mark­er. The dots can be in a ran­dom pat­tern and of dif­fer­ent sizes, or in the form of a famil­iar con­stel­la­tion. The effect will be of a star chart.

Step 2:

Draw abstract shapes and lines in and around the dots using a vari­ety of col­ored wash­able mark­ers. Colours can touch and overlap.

Step 3:

Hold­ing the spray bot­tle one foot away from the cof­fee fil­ters, spray the top cof­fee fil­ter with a light mist until the colours bleed into one another.

Tip – too much water sprayed too close to the cof­fee fil­ters wash­es out the ink. Spray light­ly once or twice, then watch the ink bleed before decid­ing if more water is needed.

Step 4:

Peel the cof­fee fil­ters apart, and place on a flat sur­face to dry.

Step 5:

Each cof­fee fil­ter rep­re­sents a unique con­stel­la­tion, with the black dots as stars and the colours as auro­ra bore­alis. As you lis­ten to the music, what do you see in your night sky? Is there an ani­mal, a bird, a per­son, or per­haps a myth­i­cal crea­ture? What is it doing? Is it hold­ing an object? What is its name? What sto­ry does it have to tell?

Once the cof­fee fil­ters are dry, use the dots and colours as a guide to sketch a dif­fer­ent con­stel­la­tion on each cof­fee fil­ter using a pen­cil. Trace the pen­cil lines with a per­ma­nent marker.

Option­al:

Many musi­cians have made music inspired by the cos­mos. Lis­ten to music of your choice and make more cof­fee fil­ter con­stel­la­tions. Place the result­ing cof­fee fil­ter con­stel­la­tions in rela­tion to each oth­er to form your own ver­sion of a night sky.

To go fur­ther and cre­ate your own music inspired by the night sky, con­tact: mlouisecampbell@gmail.com

« sol­i­dAR­i­Ty » is a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry music project which can encom­pass musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion, pub­lic per­for­mance, inter­ac­tion with pub­lic art and even polit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty and action. 

« sol­i­dAR­i­Ty » as a for­mat requires rather sim­ple con­di­tions which can be appro­pri­at­ed by most to cre­ate their own musi­cal inter­ven­tions in pub­lic space. 

What is needed: 

1. A sculp­ture or struc­ture* of which the mate­ri­als it is made of res­onate when struck.

2. A group of peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate (2 or more): the par­tic­i­pants don’t need music train­ing but they should be able to fol­low instruc­tions and exe­cute (though not nec­es­sar­i­ly per­fect­ly) at least sim­ple rhyth­mic pat­terns and coordination. 

   1. Must have basic mobil­i­ty to stand or be close enough to the sculp­ture in question;

   2. Must be able to use an object to strike the sculp­ture softly;

   3. Rec­om­mend ages: 8+

3. One or two group lead­ers (depend­ing on the size of the group). The group leader ide­al­ly is a drum­mer or oth­er musi­cian who has a cer­tain facil­i­ty with rhyth­mic motif inven­tion and tex­tur­al explo­ration, group con­duct­ing and struc­tur­al improvisation. 

4. Soft mal­lets** (a sin­gle mal­let or a pair) per participant

HOW-TO:

The musi­cal struc­ture involves a basic “fol­low the leader” or call-and-response for­mat. In its most basic form, the group leader is respon­si­ble for invent­ing the rhyth­mic motifs that the group will then copy and play in uni­son. Depend­ing on the size of the group and the abil­i­ty of each par­tic­i­pant, the per­for­mance can break into sub-groups play­ing con­trast­ing mate­r­i­al, thus enrich­ing or com­plex­i­fy­ing the son­ic land­scape. Tex­ture and tone are rich para­me­ters to explore in addi­tion to rhythm alone. Each sculp­ture or struc­ture will offer its unique tim­bre to play with. 

Impro­vis­ing is, for some, the sim­plest way to go about this musi­cal inter­ven­tion. How­ev­er, some lead­ers may choose to pre­pare their motifs or ideas in advance. 

Essen­tial­ly, this for­mat can be used sim­ply for the joy of music-mak­ing and son­ic explo­ration and col­lec­tive cre­ation, or it can also stand as a pre­text or com­bined effort for a polit­i­cal action and expres­sion. I believe the form and propo­si­tion is sim­ple enough that it can also be adapt­ed to var­i­ous con­texts and needs.

*Dis­claimer: some sculp­tures exist­ing in pub­lic space may not actu­al­ly be of pub­lic own­er­ship. Inter­act at your own dis­cre­tion and be pre­pared to explain your activ­i­ty to pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards or law enforcement. 

**Using soft mal­lets pro­tects the struc­tures from scratch­ing or denting. 

My process: How I came to organ­ise « solidARiTy »

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of “hit­ting” on pret­ty objects to see how they sound. I’ve come to spon­ta­neous­ly explore a vari­ety of res­o­nant sculp­tures in this way, and this has remained a per­son­al enjoy­ment and curios­i­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, I have been enam­oured with the Riopelle Foun­tain “La Joute” for many years because of its impos­ing size and beau­ty, and to the par­tic­u­lar­ly var­ied and rich tim­bre from the bronze it is made of. I fan­ta­sized about a large scale com­po­si­tion util­is­ing live per­form­ers and roboti­cized mechan­ics for per­for­mance… but all these fan­tasies were rather out of my reach. I tried to imag­ine a sim­pler way to inter­act with the sculp­ture, but was caught in the weeds of want­i­ng to “com­pose” something. 

At the same time, I felt a ris­ing need to use music in the pub­lic space to express sol­i­dar­i­ty for the many atroc­i­ties of today. For me, I felt most out­raged about the geno­cide in Pales­tine and depor­ta­tions of migrants in the US and beyond, though there is no short­age of injus­tice and vio­lence in this world, and all strug­gles are interconnected. 

Sud­den­ly, the two needs and desires col­lid­ed. I could cre­ate music with the sculp­ture in the con­text of a spon­ta­neous polit­i­cal action. Using impro­vi­sa­tion for the music expres­sion was the eas­i­est way to get the idea off the ground and to get more peo­ple involved in an uncom­pli­cat­ed for­mat that required lit­tle to no prepa­ra­tion. In this way, I could also solic­it musi­cians and non-musi­cians, which was more per­ti­nent to the polit­i­cal and col­lec­tive inten­tion of the intervention. 

The polit­i­cal aspect of the work came down to wear­ing ban­ners we made at an ear­li­er date dur­ing per­for­mance so that passers-by would know what we were evok­ing, and to make it clear that we weren’t sim­ply mak­ing music for the joy of it (noth­ing wrong with that though!). Spon­ta­neous­ly, and through the chance of cir­cum­stance, voice, singing and chant­i­ng became a large part of this per­for­mance. As I had made it known pri­or that this was a pos­si­bil­i­ty, and as I knew the poten­tial of the peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing, I was not sur­prised that it hap­pened. How­ev­er, I was sur­prised at how it hap­pened, what tran­spired, and the emo­tion­al poten­cy of the moment. 

Cap­tur­ing it on video was inten­tion­al, as the goal was to wide­ly share the action online, beyond the live moment wit­nessed by passers­by and deeply shared by the participants. 

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:

1. 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.

2. Engage: week­ly com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams that build resilience, social net­works and skills. These pro­grams are led by peers and mentors.

3. 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

01:48 Rough Draft Incu­ba­tor program

03:12 Impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty in hip hop

06:37 Com­pe­ten­cies artists need to facilitate

08:32 Indi­ca­tors of Success

09:38 Hip hop as an art form and a culture

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 Mis­ta­tim  is 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. 

View sec­tions of the documentary: 

00:00 Project introduction

01:22 Part­ner­ing with a non-Indige­nous organization

02:36 Project design

03:12 ‘Mis­ta­tim’ horse teach­ings and song creation

04:28 Artists involved in project

05:36 Tra­di­tion­al Indige­nous cul­ture and healing

07:18 Key Aspects to Suc­cess of Project

10:56 Com­pe­ten­cies and advice 

12:48 impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty and chil­dren in Indige­nous worldviews

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.

View sec­tions of the documentary:

00:00 Overview of school

02:15 Social and musi­cal goals of program

04:51 Stu­dent-focused rather than curriculum-focused

06:41 Com­pe­ten­cies that teach­ers need

10:54 What suc­cess looks like

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. 

View sec­tions of the documentary:

00:00 Overview

02:46 After-school programs

06:53 Com­mu­ni­ty song circles

07:31 Present Moment Singers

08:58 Queer Choir

10:00 Competencies

12:04 What does suc­cess look like

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 & Art Inspired 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.

View sec­tions of the documentary:

0:00   Intro­duc­ing Louise Camp­bell 

01:48 Intro­duc­ing clients of The C.A.R.E. Cen­tre 

03:39 Fea­tured activ­i­ties 

06:35 Com­pe­ten­cies need­ed to do this work

08:44 What does suc­cess look like? 

09:25 Advice for com­mu­ni­ty-engaged musicians

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.

View sec­tions of the documentary: 

0:00 Artist intro­duc­tion 

0:53 Project overview 

5:36 Fea­tured activ­i­ties  

6:43 Com­pe­ten­cies
8:41 Advice

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.

View sec­tions of the documentary:

00:00 Intro­duc­ing Alli­son and her choral work 

01:07 Fire­works Com­mu­ni­ty Choir 

02:30 Lalin Vocal Ensem­ble 

03:44 Phi­los­o­phy of choral singing

07:48 Competencies

Learn about the Van­cou­ver Adapt­ed Music Soci­ety (VAMS), Canada’s only ful­ly acces­si­ble record­ing stu­dio serv­ing the metro Van­cou­ver area. VAMS is a pro­gram of the Dis­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion. 

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?

Pre­sen­ta­tion of Music and Health Resource 

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.

On music and men­tal health

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 seniors at 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.

Ajay Heble: What is Music and Health?

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.

Arla Good: On what music and health means to her

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.

Gilles Comeau: What is music and health?

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.

Pierre Ran­court: Music in Pal­lia­tive Care

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.

What does music and health mean to you?

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.

On his first steps in work­ing with for­mer inmates

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.

Why and how is music use­ful in the con­text of rehab and incarceration?

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.

Thank you so much.

Self-care before, dur­ing and after the project

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 to car­ry out a project in pen­i­ten­tiary 

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:

Silent Rhythms

Body Per­cus­sion For The Family

For more info on Music In Incar­cer­a­tion & Reha­bil­i­ta­tion, see HERE