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Actualités et critiques du projet

Unity Charity : Empowering Youth Through Hip Hop

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

 

Kehewin Native Dance Theatre : Healing through Songwriting for Indigenous Youth

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

Community Music School of Waterloo Region

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 : Supporting local artists and building rural communities

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

Louise Campbell : Participatory Creative Music in Nature with Adults with Disabilities

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

Music From Hope : Empowering Refugee Youth through Creative Music-Making

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

Allison Girvan : Music is the Vehicle for Community Building

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

Vancouver Adapted Music Society : Bridging Gaps and Reimagining What’s Possible

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 ?

 

Rebecca Barnstaple

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.

Rob Lutes

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

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

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.

Danielle Jakubiak

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

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.

Rebecca McDonald on “What is 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

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.

Louise Campbell : Music and health at the C.A.R.E. Centre

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.

Geremia Lodi – On Making Music With Former Inmates

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

Moe Clark – On Making Music with Indigenous Youth In Lockdown and Carceral Settings

As part of the Music in Incar­ce­ra­tion & Reha­bi­li­ta­tion Resource, Moe Clark des­cribes her expe­rience as a two-spi­rit Métis artist making music with at-risk Indi­ge­nous youth in lock­down and car­cé­ral set­tings. She speaks to cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ties and the impor­tance of connec­ting with elders when wor­king with Indi­ge­nous youth.

On her artis­tic prac­tice and work in car­ce­ral settings

(Intro­duc­tion in nēhiyawē­win – Plains Cree language)

Hel­lo eve­ryone, I’ve just intro­du­ced myself in nēhiyawē­win (Plains Cree lan­guage), one of my ances­tral lan­guages. I’m a two-spi­rit Métis artist ori­gi­nal­ly from Cal­ga­ry, Alber­ta and trea­ty seven, but I cur­rent­ly reside in Tiohtià:ke / Moo­niyang on the unsea­ted ter­ri­to­ry of the Kanien’kehá:ka, the Mohawk people here in Montreal. 

I’m a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­na­ry artist. I focus pri­ma­ri­ly on spo­ken word poe­try, song crea­tion, wor­king with indi­ge­nous lan­guages, inter­ge­ne­ra­tio­nal and inter­cul­tu­ral col­la­bo­ra­tive prac­tices and pro­cesses. I like to cen­ter land-based prac­tices and approaches in the work I do, whe­ther to be wor­king actual­ly on the land, or wor­king with the land of our bodies and our ter­ri­to­ries, as tools for deco­lo­ni­za­tion, self-deter­mi­na­tion, and col­lec­tive co-creation. 

I frame my work around the medi­cine wheel, dra­wing from Métis-Cree world­view, loo­king at the holism of the body, the per­son, the spi­rit, and the mind. I like to begin from a place of mus­ca­sa­win, which is a nēhiyawē­win term which refers to belon­ging, fin­ding one’s place within the circle. A lot of the work I do frames around the circle, loo­king at how we can approach prac­tices from an equal place of belon­ging, of sto­ry­tel­ling, of com­mu­ni­ty, and orien­ting our­selves as both tea­cher and student. So we’ve all got some­thing to learn, we’ve all got some­thing to teach.

As one of my late elders Bob Smo­ker always says « I’m gon­na need you, as much as you’re gon­na need me ». This is real­ly cen­tral to the work I do in and out­side of lock­down and incar­ce­ral set­tings. I began wor­king in lock­down faci­li­ties through a local lite­ra­ry arts orga­ni­za­tion in Mon­treal, as part of a wri­ting and poe­try work­shop. These ses­sions ran for 10 weeks where I would go to the loca­tion once a week and I would work col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve­ly with the exis­ting tea­cher or peda­go­gi­cal spe­cia­list and a group of at-risk indi­ge­nous youth. The thing that felt real­ly suc­cess­ful about these work­shops was that there was consis­ten­cy, in that it wasn’t just a one-time event. It was recur­ring so it hel­ped me to esta­blish trust and make bonds with the stu­dents over the course of those 10 weeks. It hel­ped me to iden­ti­fy the needs of the stu­dents, their capa­ci­ties, abi­li­ties and slow­ly create a space where more open­ness and more unders­tan­ding of my work and prac­tices could be embo­died and inter­na­li­zed for the stu­dents, so that they could actual­ly make some of the tools and tech­niques that I was brin­ging to them their own. 

On a pro­ject with Indi­ge­nous youth in a car­ce­ral set­ting 

Hi eve­ryone. My name is Moe Clark. I’m a two-spi­rit Métis mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­na­ry artist and I’d like to share a lit­tle bit about the value and impor­tance of short-term pro­jects within lock­down and incar­ce­ral set­tings, wor­king with at-risk unde­rage indi­ge­nous youth. 

So for me these work­shops began through a local lite­ra­ry orga­ni­za­tion who acted as a host to connect me as a poet-artist-voca­list with a local faci­li­ty here in Mon­treal. I want to main­tain ano­ny­mi­ty so I will not express or name any of the orga­ni­za­tions or ins­ti­tu­tions per­so­nal­ly. I will say that these ses­sions were incre­di­bly valuable and dyna­mic in that I would attend the faci­li­ty one hour per week, over the course of 10 weeks. I would work col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve­ly with the host tea­cher with a group of anyw­here bet­ween 5 and 10 youth. To begin the pro­jects, I under­took trai­ning through a local fami­ly ser­vices orga­ni­za­tion to explore sen­si­ti­vi­ty notions of trau­ma and how to col­la­bo­rate and work with at-risk youth who might be in pre­ca­rious situations. 

In addi­tion to this, I call on my own tool­kit and bundle which includes expe­rience with soma­tic expe­rien­cing which is an embo­died approach to the­ra­py and a trau­ma-infor­med lens. It explores and looks at the body as a site of memo­ry and crea­ti­vi­ty, as well as a site of a lot of expe­riences. I also draw from prac­tices of medi­cine wheel tea­chings, which real­ly looks at the four direc­tions and the who­lism of the per­son that we have a phy­si­cal, a men­tal, a spi­ri­tual, and an emo­tio­nal body. So real­ly exa­mi­ning and explo­ring these four bodies as essen­tial aspects to who and how we are in the world. I also draw from expe­riences of over 20 years of crea­tive faci­li­ta­tion, in and out­side of indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties, with at-risk youth, with youth with disa­bi­li­ties, and inter­ge­ne­ra­tio­nal and inter­cul­tu­ral collaboration. 

Throu­ghout the course of these 10 ses­sions, we explo­red dif­ferent tools and tech­niques of crea­tive wri­ting and often wor­ked from prompts from other indi­ge­nous authors and crea­tors and musi­cians. Whe­ne­ver pos­sible I tried to use tools and prompts that incor­po­ra­ted indi­ge­nous lan­guage and cultu­ral­ly spe­ci­fic fra­mings that were spe­ci­fic to the youth I was wor­king with. 

I don’t claim to know eve­ry­thing there is to know about being indi­ge­nous. I have my own expe­riences as a Métis artist who grew up in the sub­urbs of Cal­ga­ry and cur­rent­ly lives in Tiohtià:ke in Mon­treal, but being able to draw from a tool­kit of many dif­ferent indi­ge­nous authors, wri­ters, and musi­cians hel­ped me to create more acces­si­bi­li­ty and inclu­si­vi­ty for the youth I was wor­king with. 

One real­ly valuable tool during the work­shops was col­lec­tive crea­tive wri­ting and col­lec­tive song­wri­ting. This gave youth the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their ideas and their sto­ries, and to build rela­tion­ships with one ano­ther, without the neces­si­ty of having to be lite­rate, having to have good wri­ting skills, and they were able to laugh. They were able to make dif­ferent sounds.

They were able to mimic and explore dif­ferent sounds from their land­scapes where they were rai­sed, and where they grew up, and where they had cur­rent­ly been taken out of, in order to reha­bi­li­tate in a lock­down faci­li­ty in an urban set­ting. To conclude these 10 work­shops, we crea­ted a chat book and this chat book was ack­now­led­ged and cele­bra­ted and each student left with their own copy of it as a keep­sake and as a memoir when they left the faci­li­ty and conti­nued on in their lives. So that’s it for short-term pro­jects in lock­down and incar­ce­ra­ted situations.

On cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ties when wor­king with Indi­ge­nous youth 

Hi eve­ryone. My name is Moe and I am a two-spi­rit mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­na­ry metis artist. I’d like to talk now about cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ties and pro­to­cols when wor­king with incar­ce­ra­ted youth, 

spe­ci­fi­cal­ly indi­ge­nous youth as a Métis artist and crea­tor. I’ve wor­ked exten­si­ve­ly with indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties folks coming from dif­ferent nations, dif­ferent walks of life, dif­ferent per­so­nal and col­lec­tive histories. 

I think, first and fore­most, what’s impor­tant to note and what’s impor­tant to do your home­work on, is what are some of the his­to­ri­cal sys­te­mic and cultu­ral notions that have led to the cur­rent situa­tion of the youth or the com­mu­ni­ty you’re wor­king with. So I real­ly like to exa­mine and look clo­se­ly at the his­to­ry and impacts of resi­den­tial schools, on the his­to­ry and impact of contact in dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties. So, when did set­tler com­mu­ni­ties come into Indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties and how has that impac­ted the cultu­ral conti­nuum, lan­guage conti­nuum, and tra­di­tio­nal land-based prac­tices of that com­mu­ni­ty. And I like to bring these notions into the work so that I can exa­mine and explore, and also faci­li­tate from a place that is more know­led­geable, and more aware and cultu­ral­ly sen­si­tive to what the par­ti­ci­pants might be expe­rien­cing, and how those expe­riences have been infor­med and impac­ted because of sys­te­mic situa­tions and colo­ni­za­tion. So that’s step one. 

Step two is also loo­king at an unders­tan­ding that each indi­ge­nous people and each indi­ge­nous nation have dif­ferent cultu­ral contexts, dif­ferent lan­guages, and dif­ferent prac­tices of rela­ting, of expres­sing, of com­mu­ni­ca­ting. And this type of pro­cess is one that as you conti­nue to work in the com­mu­ni­ty, you become fami­liar and you get to know and you build rela­tion­ships with the communities.

So I think that’s real­ly the most impor­tant not to make assump­tions, to come with as much infor­ma­tion as you can, and to main­tain a level of curio­si­ty and open­ness to lear­ning about and lear­ning from the com­mu­ni­ties you’re wor­king with. 

In addi­tion to this, I always ensure that I am wor­king with a coun­cil of elders, of com­mu­ni­ty, people that I know and I’ve built trus­ting rela­tion­ships with so that wha­te­ver I take with me when I leave those work­shops, I can pro­cess and work through with the sup­port and cultu­ral sup­port of elders. So this might include wor­king with plant medi­cines, wor­king with dif­ferent hea­ling tools. So that wha­te­ver I might have picked up during the work­shops, wha­te­ver trau­mas and chal­lenges might have been sha­red or expres­sed, I also have a method and a pro­cess of wor­king through those dif­fi­cul­ties. And in rela­tion­ship and in conver­sa­tion with elders and coun­sel, whe­ther that be other arts faci­li­ta­tors, other tea­chers, I’m also able to speak to and to pro­cess some of the chal­lenges that have come up, some of the things where I didn’t neces­sa­ri­ly know how to respond, to deve­lop and fur­ther my tool­kit to be a bet­ter ally and a bet­ter advo­cate for the needs of the stu­dents and the par­ti­ci­pants I’m wor­king with.

On the impor­tance of connec­ting with Elders when wor­king with Indi­ge­nous youth 

Hi eve­ryone. My name is Moe and I am a two-spi­rit mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­na­ry metis artist. I’d like to talk now about cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ties and pro­to­cols when wor­king with incar­ce­ra­ted youth, spe­ci­fi­cal­ly indi­ge­nous youth as a Métis artist and crea­tor. I’ve wor­ked exten­si­ve­ly with indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties folks coming from dif­ferent nations, dif­ferent walks of life, dif­ferent per­so­nal and col­lec­tive histories. 

I think, first and fore­most, what’s impor­tant to note and what’s impor­tant to do your home­work on, is what are some of the his­to­ri­cal sys­te­mic and cultu­ral notions that have led to the cur­rent situa­tion of the youth or the com­mu­ni­ty you’re wor­king with. So I real­ly like to exa­mine and look clo­se­ly at the his­to­ry and impacts of resi­den­tial schools, on the his­to­ry and impact of contact in dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties. So, when did set­tler com­mu­ni­ties come into Indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties and how has that impac­ted the cultu­ral conti­nuum, lan­guage conti­nuum, and tra­di­tio­nal land-based prac­tices of that com­mu­ni­ty. And I like to bring these notions into the work so that I can exa­mine and explore, and also faci­li­tate from a place that is more know­led­geable, and more aware and cultu­ral­ly sen­si­tive to what the par­ti­ci­pants might be expe­rien­cing, and how those expe­riences have been infor­med and impac­ted because of sys­te­mic situa­tions and colo­ni­za­tion. So that’s step one. 

Step two is also loo­king at an unders­tan­ding that each indi­ge­nous people and each indi­ge­nous nation have dif­ferent cultu­ral contexts, dif­ferent lan­guages, and dif­ferent prac­tices of rela­ting, of expres­sing, of com­mu­ni­ca­ting. And this type of pro­cess is one that as you conti­nue to work in the com­mu­ni­ty, you become fami­liar and you get to know and you build rela­tion­ships with the communities.

So I think that’s real­ly the most impor­tant not to make assump­tions, to come with as much infor­ma­tion as you can, and to main­tain a level of curio­si­ty and open­ness to lear­ning about and lear­ning from the com­mu­ni­ties you’re wor­king with. 

In addi­tion to this, I always ensure that I am wor­king with a coun­cil of elders, of com­mu­ni­ty, people that I know and I’ve built trus­ting rela­tion­ships with so that wha­te­ver I take with me when I leave those work­shops, I can pro­cess and work through with the sup­port and cultu­ral sup­port of elders. So this might include wor­king with plant medi­cines, wor­king with dif­ferent hea­ling tools. So that wha­te­ver I might have picked up during the work­shops, wha­te­ver trau­mas and chal­lenges might have been sha­red or expres­sed, I also have a method and a pro­cess of wor­king through those dif­fi­cul­ties. And in rela­tion­ship and in conver­sa­tion with elders and coun­sel, whe­ther that be other arts faci­li­ta­tors, other tea­chers, I’m also able to speak to and to pro­cess some of the chal­lenges that have come up, some of the things where I didn’t neces­sa­ri­ly know how to respond, to deve­lop and fur­ther my tool­kit to be a bet­ter ally and a bet­ter advo­cate for the needs of the stu­dents and the par­ti­ci­pants I’m wor­king with.

 

For more info on Moe Clark, see their artist pro­file HERE. For a taste of what Moe Clark does, see the fol­lo­wing pro­ject fea­tu­red on the PCM Hub :

Sound Sto­ries From the Land

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

Hugh Chris Brown – On Making Music in Prisons

As part of the Music in Incar­ce­ra­tion & Reha­bi­li­ta­tion Resource, Hugh Chris Brown des­cribes his expe­rience in making music in his pro­gram Pros & Cons and it’s ori­gins, the effi­ca­cy of music in pri­sons, what making music brought him and the inmates, and self-care prac­tices he uses to sus­tain him­self in this work.

On his first steps esta­bli­shing the pri­son arts pro­gram Pros & Cons

Hi, my name is Hugh Chris­to­pher Brown. I iden­ti­fy as he/him, always open to sug­ges­tions for impro­ve­ment. My expe­rience with incar­ce­ra­tion and rehab has stem­med sole­ly from a music pro­gram that I deve­lo­ped cal­led the “Pros and Cons » music program. 

Ini­tial­ly, it was a res­ponse to the clo­sing of the agri­cul­tu­ral pro­grams in pri­sons, a very high­ly suc­cess­ful pro­gram that was being shut down. As a musi­cian, I just thought « Oh I’ll get inside and do what I know how to do and do some­thing posi­tive in there ». Because I didn’t feel that a bene­fit for incar­ce­ra­ted people or offen­ders was actual­ly going to work, I rea­li­zed at that time that we were dea­ling with a vul­ne­rable popu­la­tion. They were vul­ne­rable because they had per­pe­tra­ted harm to others, which is a hard thing for people to get their heads around. Over the course of the last 10 years, it’s grown to mul­tiple ins­ti­tu­tions. It’s now a natio­nal cha­ri­ty and it’s gone from song­wri­ting work­shops to buil­ding recor­ding stu­dios in pri­sons and relea­sing the recor­dings that are made by the inmates that are then lin­ked to cha­ri­table pur­suits of the per­pe­tra­tor’s choice. So it’s a model of res­to­ra­tive jus­tice and a way of har­nes­sing peo­ple’s time inside of sen­tences in a fruit­ful way. 

My first steps to get­ting inside were through buil­ding rela­tion­ships, in my case, with Kate John­son who was a pri­son cha­plain and made those first work­shops pos­sible. Fol­lo­wing that, it was about buil­ding rela­tion­ships with inmates them­selves asking them what was wor­king, get­ting their advice. I always thought I would build a pro­gram and then give it to Cor­rec­tions but both inmates and Cor­rec­tions offi­cials them­selves said no. This is wor­king because it’s inde­pendent and people are coming in of their own volition. 

Fur­ther rela­tion­ships star­ted being built with pro­gram­ming offi­cers and the local Regio­nal Depu­ty com­mis­sio­ner’s office, which was inva­luable. To this day, I would say com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ships are pri­ma­ry. I’ve also been men­to­red by people who’ve done work in pri­sons for years and in dif­ferent aspects, eve­ry­thone from cor­rec­tio­nal offi­cers to people coming run­ning well­ness and health activities.

The­re’s a lot to learn and a lot of people have alrea­dy done those basic steps, so learn from them.

On the effi­ca­cy of music in prisons

Okay, I’m just going to speak a lit­tle bit now on the effi­ca­cy and pur­pose of music, and, I would say, the arts in gene­ral in incar­ce­ra­ted populations. 

One of the things that’s very dif­fi­cult is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with cri­mi­na­li­ty, both as a stig­ma­ti­zing fac­tor, and then as a means of self-defense inside. What I have noti­ced is folks coming into groups, either recor­ding or sin­ging, will be reticent to share. To lite­ral­ly open their mouths. Then all of a sud­den you’re par­ti­ci­pa­ting in music and it’s attrac­tive. And music is a tem­po­ral art. You have no other alter­na­tive but to be present, and that present tense as pain­ful as it is, music and art is an emo­tio­nal plat­form which can help ease that chal­lenge. I have seen it mul­tiple times where folks go from being total­ly reclu­sive to com­ple­te­ly enthu­sias­tic, because once they’ve cros­sed that thre­shold, they want to share that expe­rience with others. 

It’s also giving people the reins to their own lives. Music is some­thing that they can work on pri­va­te­ly. It’s not ordai­ned or jud­ged by others pri­ma­ri­ly, although they will ask me quite often. They just want me to treat them like any other pro­fes­sio­nal musi­cian, which I do. The pur­pose of this pro­ject keeps chan­ging and expan­ding. At first, it was a res­ponse to the can­cel­la­tion not only of the Agri­cul­tu­ral pro­grams, but the modi­fi­ca­tion of the cha­plain­cy and the can­cel­la­tion, in some cases, of the culi­na­ry programs.

And so, it was filling a void. Now, what it’s doing a decade in, is employing people on the out­side, both in music, engi­nee­ring, spe­ci­fic tasks, but also some­times in com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­zing. I’m brin­ging inmates back inside to work with cur­rent­ly incar­ce­ra­ted people because that incar­ce­ra­tion at that moment goes from being a lia­bi­li­ty to an asset. So I, as a musi­cian, can do a lot of work when I bring in someone who’s been inside. Mere­ly by their pre­sence, they’re doing work that I can’t neces­sa­ri­ly do. So the pur­pose has expan­ded as a way of glea­ning an employable aspect out of the expe­rience of incar­ce­ra­tion. Hope­ful­ly that expands for us as the pro­gram expands, now that we’re a natio­nal cha­ri­ty. That’s one of the aspects that the music might serve someone when they get out of pri­son in terms of re-inte­gra­tion. The other way that it defi­ni­te­ly serves is just in socia­li­zing people while they’re inside.

On pri­son culture, and issues expe­rien­ced by inmates inside and out­side pri­sons 

The other way that it defi­ni­te­ly serves is just in socia­li­zing people while they’re inside. Incar­ce­ra­ted popu­la­tions can be very iso­la­ted, very encam­ped, and the music just natu­ral­ly becomes ecu­me­ni­cal. It becomes sha­red across dif­ferent cultures. We’ve had an expe­rience where in one case, a white inmate was making music with rap­pers and he was saying, « If my fami­ly knew I was in the room with black people they would disown me ». As you know, not a sho­cking sta­te­ment, and also some­thing that then led to weeks of conver­sa­tion, and I would think would affect that per­son’s atti­tude when they’re on the outside. 

By taking care of music toge­ther and by crea­ting a pro­per form of inter­de­pen­dence, I think we wit­ness what other people are use­ful for. We build trust and we rea­lize that a lot is pos­sible when we have that trust. And that trust that has often been denied to folks who end up in pri­son long before their incar­ce­ra­tion. Some of the cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ties I’d say that we have to reco­gnize are from the gene­ral popu­la­tion. I’ll start with the stig­ma­ti­za­tion of incar­ce­ra­tion and sca­pe­goa­ting the­re­by, because it’s easy to pick on someone who’s alrea­dy been fin­ge­red for doing harm and then trig­ge­ring people who are trau­ma­ti­zed. If they meet someone who’s a per­pe­tra­tor of a crime that they’ve suf­fe­red very often, it’s going to be trig­ge­ring for them.

So these are chal­lenges that we’re mee­ting in our pro­gram as folks gra­duate, and as we inte­grate them. The dif­ferent ways of addres­sing this, I would say, imme­dia­te­ly stem from com­mu­ni­ca­tions and then just fol­lo­wing the legal codes as they are. You know, it’s cal­led Cor­rec­tions. It’s not cal­led ‘draw and quar­ter in the public square and throw people away’. We work under the tenant that eve­ryone is res­pon­sible and no one is dis­po­sable. Some people can’t hang with that and you don’t want to push but­tons. Howe­ver, expo­sing those kind of pre­ju­dices is what we need to do as a civil socie­ty if we’re going to advance. And we have gone from dra­wing and quar­te­ring people in the public square to incar­ce­ra­tion. Hope­ful­ly we can get a lit­tle more per­fect constantly.

The other cultu­ral sen­si­ti­vi­ty, of course on the part of incar­ce­ra­ted folks, is impos­ter syn­drome. When people start taking res­pon­si­bi­li­ty for them­selves, it’s sca­ry. I mean you’ve been depen­ding on an ins­ti­tu­tion almost the way we are when we’re in school, and so how that is met is by actual­ly being vul­ne­rable your­self. 

I, as an artist, have to relate all the time. « Oh yeah I was sca­red shit­less that time on stage », or this is what I lear­ned from this per­son, or when I bring in people to do work­shops and an incar­ce­ra­ted per­son will say to me, « Wow I lear­ned a lot that day » … I lear­ned a lot that day ! So regu­la­ting and put­ting your­self on the same level as people real­ly helps to address that state of impos­ter syn­drome which can be debilitating.

It can be debi­li­ta­ting for all of us, let alone people who have ser­ved time.

On ano­ny­mi­ty, and the ethics of content creation

In terms of the ethics around content crea­tion and what hap­pens to it, I can speak spe­ci­fi­cal­ly to our model, which is ano­ny­mi­ty in release of the music. So what that does well is it pro­tects the per­pe­tra­tor. It also pro­tects vic­tims who could be trau­ma­ti­zed if they saw someo­ne’s name tied to a piece of work which might have been very ear­nest­ly made, but still it wouldn’t mat­ter to them. So ano­ny­mi­ty, it pro­tects both sides from being tar­ge­ted and at the same time you give crea­tive control and owner­ship to the creator.

So we work on publi­shing, on tea­ching people how to real­ly regu­late and control their own content. They can always do ver­sions when they’re on the out­side. The stuff that they make for the pro­gram is put out free of charge, tied to cha­ri­table works. So it’s a way of har­nes­sing the time that people are spen­ding inside in a very pro­duc­tive way. Using that time to bene­fit others, and kee­ping it clear of the com­mer­cia­li­za­tion, and any other thing that might kind of hot­ly become under criticism.

On what making music in pri­sons brings to him and to inmates

I guess the other thing to talk about is so you know why I’m doing this. I saw the agri­cul­tu­ral pro­grams being des­troyed that had a 0.1 % reci­di­vism rate, mea­ning no one who went through those pro­grams were reof­fen­ding. And I star­ted to unders­tand the rea­sons why were because they were loo­king to load pri­sons, and break some­thing, and ratio­na­lize pri­va­ti­za­tion. It just see­med so cyni­cal and dark to me that I just nee­ded to become enga­ged and invol­ved. Music is one of my prin­ci­pal enga­ge­ments with the world, so that’s what I had to offer. I think very qui­ck­ly it became evident to me how impor­tant music is, when I saw it create so much ener­gy. And the­re’s lots of sto­ries of people being reu­ni­ted with their fami­lies through this work, and a gro­wing concern for each other in incar­ce­ra­ted states. 

People have been saying to me when they’re about to go and get parole, « Oh I don’t want to leave until this pro­ject’s fini­shed » or « Are you going to stay here because this was very impor­tant to my friend who’s still invol­ved here. » And just that notion that they’re thin­king in a out­side method to me is a por­tion of free­dom that this work is affor­ding the indi­vi­dual by their own work. And what I consi­der suc­cess is when I see that. The­re’s two or three people who have been with this pro­gram a long time that at the end of the day, if it was only about those three people, the decade of work has been worth it. It’s esti­ma­ted that over a thou­sand have gone through our pro­gram. We’re loo­king to expand and natio­na­lize currently.

That will be great. The suc­cess is real­ly, real­ly per­so­nal and very indi­vi­dual, and the amount that I’ve lear­ned doing this has dee­pe­ned and rei­gni­ted my rela­tion­ship to music and myself.

On self-care and dis­cer­ning your role when wor­king in pri­sons 

All of this work is dee­ply emo­tio­nal. We’re very keen into the expe­rience of others, so it takes a great deal of self-care. Some of the things that I prac­tice are meditation.

I per­so­nal­ly sit an hour a day. I find that’s very, very help­ful for me to dis­cern what my role is with others. When you’re facing folks who have had a rough go, the seduc­tion is the fee­ling that you can fix. That’s not real­ly what we’re here for. We’re just here to abide and present ano­ther option, and art can help make that attrac­tive. And if you can get out of that ego men­ta­li­ty that you’re fixing or hel­ping, again, put­ting your­self on the same level as eve­ryone else, that’s good self-care. It’s kind of let­ting your­self off the hook of res­pon­si­bi­li­ty that way, and I’d say again, making your­self vul­ne­rable. It’s heal­thy. It can be sca­ry but it’s the only way I know how to do it. And 10 years in, I’ve had expe­riences where I’ve done the­ra­peu­tic work, plant medi­cines, well­ness work, the pri­son work never comes up within that context as some­thing that is taxing me. Quite the oppo­site, it actual­ly is giving to me.

It might not be what you’d expect, but when you’re in a place where eve­ry moment of atten­tion is appre­cia­ted, it is very, very, very posi­tive and you just have to divorce your­self from that ego side – of the cor­rec­tor or fixer. 

You’re not that, you’re just a friend really.

 

For more info on Hugh Chris Brown, see their artist pro­file HERE. For a taste of what Hugh Chris Brown does, see the fol­lo­wing pro­jects fea­tu­red on the PCM Hub :

Pros & Cons

Get­ting Star­ted in Cor­rec­tio­nal Institutions

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