Performing Arts

SHARED1: Building a network of arts and humanities-based initiatives in mental health and well-being across the globe
This article reports on the learning from a series of workshops organized by the Seeing Arts Health Research EnacteD (SHARED) project that aimed to establish an international network of researchers arts and health providers and practitioners. Online workshops were designed to provide a platform for exchange of best practices in arts in health research and to encourage a dialogue between various international arts in health researchers and practitioners from six countries across the globe. This exchange was built on participant contributions (three practice-based presentations for each workshop highlighting alignment with community assets inclusion and partnerships) followed by reflective group discussions. Results show that arts in health initiatives in different contexts globally often share similar strengths and face common challenges. Participants noted the need for networks such as SHARED where researchers and practitioners can come together to exchange best practice collaborate on future initiatives and work out solutions for shared challenges.

Popular music pedagogy in music teacher education: A literature review
Higher education music education programmes that prioritize Eurocentric perspectives related to the western classical canon may limit future music educators’ ability to connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences. Growing interest in diverse and inclusive approaches to music education has led to increased attention on the inclusion of popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Drawing on culturally responsive pedagogies as a theoretical framework in this review of literature I examined research related to popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Researchers suggest that incorporating popular music in music classrooms may connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences resulting in greater student engagement and promoting lifelong musical involvement. Based on significant findings in this research music educators might consider reimagining music teacher education programmes to reflect the changing landscape of music education and prepare future music educators with the skills necessary to acknowledge and value the diverse musical experiences and cultural contexts of students.

Youth, Power, Performance
Applied Theatre with Systemically Marginalized Youth
This book draws on over twenty years scholarship from Diane Conrad's academic career in applied theatre research with systemically marginalized youth. It draws on applied theatre research conducted with youth in three specific contexts: in alternative high schools in a youth jail and with street-involved youth.
By drawing on examples from several projects highlighting youths’ voices and youths’ creations the book offers an introduction to the researcher and theoretical considerations for the research suggests practical strategies for engaging with this youth population describes the applied theatre process developed. It addresses specific considerations for working with incarcerated youth and with Indigenous youth and explores the potential demonstrated for youth empowerment through applied theatre some ethical considerations in conducting such work and the role of applied theatre in social change. The book may be of interest to applied theatre researchers instructors practitioners and students and to drama teachers and youth workers.

Community music for critical positive youth development: A cross-disciplinary literature review of implications for addressing social inequity
Critical positive youth development (CPYD) is a promising framework for supporting young people in strengths-based ways to both thrive individually and address structural foundations of social inequity. This literature review explores community music for operationalizing CPYD. Database searches were supplemented with expert consultation and handsearching of identified articles and key journals. The authors used a purposive sampling strategy within a critical interpretive synthesis methodology to select 50 articles exploring outcomes of community music programmes with young people. They synthesized findings from these 50 cross-disciplinary studies to illuminate outcomes across the CPYD framework: competence confidence compassion connection character contribution and critical consciousness. This study affirms the use of community music in contexts of youth development and implications for health and arts practitioners and researchers are discussed in relation to using music as a potential approach for CPYD to address social inequity with young people. Findings highlight the need for increased art-based research that explores how community music can support equity.

VestAndPage’s performance operas: Dreaming space–time alternatives through body-based performance actions and sound
This article addresses the concept of performance opera by artist duo VestAndPage aiming to investigate how the corporeal and sonic can generate space–time alternatives through unconventional modes of performance-making. They describe performance operas as collaborative site-specific works that are unrepeatable. To produce them VestAndPage organized experiential co-creation artist-in-residences to encourage community-building among the performers they invite to collaborate on an opera. During production body-based performance actions and the sounds of various elements (from everyday noises to sophisticated electronic experimentation) allow aesthetic pitfalls and ruptures to emerge shaping a performance opera’s immediate experience and contributing to reshaping what might otherwise be considered ‘normal’ reality.

Techno-musicality in Australian secondary music classrooms
Techno-musicality – the mechanics of audio production on the meaningful effect of a recording – is an integral part of composition production and performance of popular music. Yet this discussion is largely absent from Australian music classrooms. The pedagogy of aural perception is taught as part of the Australian music curriculum and framed via six concepts/elements of music – pitch duration structure texture timbre and dynamics/expressive techniques. Student engagement with these six concepts largely neglects to address matters of techno-musicality. A study conducted across Australian secondary students and their educators revealed that students demonstrate rudimentary skills and/or knowledge to adequately engage with techno-musicality in their listening analyses and yet educators are willing and mostly confident working in this area. This article addresses the importance of techno-musicality to meaningful analyses of recorded sound and discusses how educators can equip students to engage with techno-musicality utilizing the musical concepts and in particular timbre and expressive techniques.

Working with words: A heuristic study into the companionship of visual art-making and intuitive prose
This article delves into a heuristic research exploration through art-based inquiry examining the symbiotic relationship between art-making and writing revealing profound insights into the author’s creative synthesis as a reflection of self. The study explored how the interplay between words and images might facilitate an enhanced art therapy experience particularly relevant for trauma resolution. Outcomes suggest that using ‘intuitive prose’ writing a method developed by the author alongside expressive art-making appeared to foster recognition of the authentic self integration of previously hidden emotions connection with transpersonal awareness the ability to re-enter art-making more seamlessly and an improved tolerance to a both/and mindset. Self-study gleaned three implications for practice: pairing art-making and writing deepens the noticing of unconscious emergent themes prolongs the staying with and revisiting of emotional states and supports the integration of meaning-making. Ethical approaches in further research and potential applications to therapeutic client work are noted.

Mourning lost parts: An art-based response to experiences in/of a neurorehabilitation day service
This visual essay honours the importance of creative practice as a way of staying in touch with the affective dimensions of human situations and experience. Drawing on observations field notes and documentation of artistic practice from her doctoral research the author engages in a reflexive conversation with an emergent ‘body’ of artwork made in response to observations and experiences in and of a neurorehabilitation day service. Broadening the scope of response art to the performative nature of ‘making’ the work of art amplifies the resonance of emotional and sensory affect. This brings an ethics of care to the fore giving voice to aspects of organizational culture (internal and external) that might easily be lost and emphasizing the need for time and space to mourn.

A cold case from 1984: Navigating subcultural memory, discomfort and uncertainty
The goal of this article is to provide an account of the difficulty in the present of reconstructing a punk event that took place 40 years ago. I will use this undertaking as the basis for reflecting on the larger conceptual stakes (ideas and concepts) that are illustrated by this specific event from the past the Brockwell Park Festival London. I played bass at this event in Strawberry Switchblade a female-led cult post-punk band. A cold case is used here as a metaphor for this reconstruction; the larger conceptual stakes are the ‘mystery’ to be investigated. This in turn enables me to frame my account of that day from the past in terms of how it functions within punk and post-punk culture and scholarship. There was a lot of fun energy and some ‘aggro’ (i.e. violent or threatening behaviour) at this event. I present an autoethnography reviews from the time and various first-hand accounts of this particularly tense punk and post-punk event i.e. my cold case so that I can examine the significance and the importance of returning to the past and unpicking the memories and myths of subcultural experience. This is followed by a discussion of the larger conceptual stakes: memory subcultural memory and myth; ‘tribes’; discomfort and uncertainty.

Developing habits of mind for an ethical and accountable songwriting praxis
In a co-taught course on songwriting we identified a need to discuss the ethics of being a songwriter. Songwriters and songwriting educators must consider how to best address issues related to cultural appropriation and develop ethical and accountable responses in their creative works. This article forwards habits of mind songwriters and songwriting educators can use to develop intellectual practices to focus on cultural exchange and lean into the power dynamics that surface in creative work. Habits of mind include posing critical questions and engaging reflexivity researching lineages of the musics practised by individual songwriters considering how songwriters position themselves in their music developing a disposition towards compensation and taking a stance of cultural humility. This article suggests methods to help aspiring songwriters take up hard questions about what it means to be creative in a world where cultural exploitation has too quickly become a way to find commercial success.