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This pro­ject explores crea­tive music making in a secon­da­ry wind band pro­gram Nel­son Man­de­la High School, one of Alberta’s desi­gna­ted High School Rede­si­gn Schools. In a rede­si­gn school, tasks are desi­gned not only to assess cur­ri­cu­lum out­comes, but also to help deve­lop core com­pe­ten­cies in our stu­dents. Each course deve­lops dif­ferent com­pe­ten­cies – for music spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, the com­pe­ten­cies are Crea­ti­vi­ty, Col­la­bo­ra­tion, and Per­so­nal Growth. Music tea­cher Keshi­ni Sena­nayake and her stu­dents share and reflect on crea­tive music making in their classroom :

Hi, my name is Keshi­ni Sena­nayake (she/her). I live and teach on Trea­ty 7 Ter­ri­to­ry, spe­ci­fi­cal­ly in Cal­ga­ry, Alber­ta. I cur­rent­ly teach Grade 10–12 Music at Nel­son Man­de­la High School. Our pro­gram includes a wide varie­ty of the fol­lo­wing – Ins­tru­men­tal Music, Concert Band, Choir, Guitar/Rock Band, Cham­ber Music, and Strings Ensemble. 

Crea­tive Challenges

I use “Crea­tive Chal­lenges”, or crea­tive music making tasks, to assess not only spe­ci­fic musi­cal skills/curriculum out­comes, but also the stu­dents’ abi­li­ties to col­la­bo­rate toge­ther to create their own ori­gi­nal music, using a set of gui­de­lines given to them. These crea­tive chal­lenges have become a regu­lar part of my pro­gram, to ensure stu­dents not only learn and deve­lop their musi­cal skills, but also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to deve­lop their own crea­ti­vi­ty. I have found immense value in crea­ting a culture where crea­ti­vi­ty is a regu­lar part of the music pro­gram – an increase in confi­dence of stu­dents expe­ri­men­ting and pro­blem sol­ving in class acti­vi­ties, and crea­ting a music pro­gram where stu­dents are co-crea­tors in pro­gram deci­sions and the class/rehearsal pro­cess. Here are two such crea­tive challenges : 

1. Sym­bols and Visual Score : This exer­cise can be used with any skill level of stu­dents. It has wor­ked effec­ti­ve­ly with my senior stu­dents, as well as my begin­ners. Stu­dents are given a set of cards with dif­ferent shapes and sym­bols. Their chal­lenge is to arrange the shapes/symbols into a visual score to represent their ori­gi­nal composition. 
2. Com­po­sing with Reper­toire Excerpts : An exer­cise used spe­ci­fi­cal­ly with band stu­dents, com­po­sing with reper­toire excerpts asks stu­dents are to mix and com­bine melo­dic excerpts from their band pieces to create their own com­po­si­tion, or “remix” as the stu­dents like to call them. This task is great not just to get stu­dents being crea­tive, but also gets stu­dents prac­ti­sing and rehear­sal parts of their band pieces ! 

Suc­cess­ful Music Making at Nel­son Man­de­la High School : Five ‘Look-fors’

This video explores what a suc­cess­ful music pro­gram means to me. My thoughts on this will be constant­ly evol­ving, but these are the main pillars of what I hope stu­dents will take away from their expe­rience in the Nel­son Man­de­la music program. 

Trans­crip­tion : “When I was hired to build the pro­gram at the school I’m cur­rent­ly at, I had some time to reflect and think about, ‘what do I want stu­dents to take away from taking music at Man­de­la?’ Slow­ly along the way, this wasn’t right at the begin­ning, but throu­ghout my years of tea­ching, I’ve deve­lo­ped five ‘look-fors’, or traits, or big­ger ideas that I want stu­dents to be able to take away from my program. 

1. The first was for stu­dents to deve­lop life­long skills to be suc­cess­ful in any life pur­suit. Kno­wing that, regard­less of if my stu­dents choose to conti­nue on to a career in music or not, kno­wing that they’re going to be deve­lo­ping life skills or com­pe­ten­cies that would help make them suc­cess­ful no mat­ter what they decide to pur­sue next. For example, the time mana­ge­ment piece of being able to juggle various ensembles along with their home­work and ath­le­tics and other things, the abi­li­ty to col­la­bo­rate and work toge­ther, or the abi­li­ty to take cri­tique or feed­back and apply it so that they can improve their skills. So that was one of the ‘look-fors’ I was hoping kids would get out of my pro­gram : deve­lo­ping those life­long skills to be suc­cess­ful humans whe­re­ver they go next. 
2. The second trait I was hoping for was for stu­dents to deve­lop musi­cal skills so that they can pur­sue their own musi­cal endea­vors, kno­wing that stu­dents come into the class­room with their own inter­ests and their own ideas alrea­dy of what they want to accom­plish. Whe­ther they want to be able to per­form a song or they want to be to com­pose a song, how can I teach them musi­cal skills for them to be able to pur­sue their own musi­cal goals ? 
3. The other goal that I had was to be able to pro­vide enri­ching oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents, whe­ther that was through per­for­mances, work­shops, concerts, being able to pro­vide those oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents who may not have access to if it wasn’t for a school music program. 
4. The other one was to build a posi­tive com­mu­ni­ty, to create this posi­tive com­mu­ni­ty in the school where stu­dents can feel inclu­ded and a space where they can feel safe to be them­selves and to come toge­ther with a com­mon goal of crea­ting music together. 
5. This last goal, which has become more so now than when I star­ted, was to help stu­dents deve­lop an anti-oppres­sive lens through music, through stu­dy and the pur­suit of music, hel­ping them deve­lop an equi­ty and anti-oppres­sive lens so that they can deve­lop empa­thy and be pro­duc­tive allies and contri­bute to pro­duc­tive change in our world. 

When I think about what is suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion, and what does that mean to me and my stu­dents, those are the five that I have over the years built as ‘look-fors’ for when I think about what I want stu­dents to get out of my program.” 

The Value of Crea­tive Music Making

This video explores my thoughts on the value of crea­tive music making, and what drew me towards ensu­ring crea­tive music making is an inte­gral part of the music pro­gram. Explo­ring crea­tive music making in my own tea­ching prac­tice has not only high­ligh­ted some of the gaps in tra­di­tio­nal music edu­ca­tion, but also open my eyes to the pos­si­bi­li­ties and bene­fits for stu­dents, when we are willing to ven­ture out­side of the colo­nial struc­tures and prac­tices embed­ded in tra­di­tio­nal music education. 

Trans­crip­tion :

“When I gra­dua­ted from my BA pro­gram, I was left with some prompts from our pro­fes­sor Doug Frie­sen, and was also reflec­ting on what I was able to observe and see within my own tea­ching prac­ti­cum. The com­bi­na­tion of that plus the first couple of years of my tea­ching made me rea­lize that if you’ve got a pro­gram that fol­lows the tra­di­tio­nal Euro­cen­tric clas­si­cal music direc­tion, there are not many oppor­tu­ni­ties around stu­dents actual­ly crea­ting ori­gi­nal music. 

Doug has a very famous quote that always kind of stuck with me : ‘What’s crea­tive about tel­ling kids where to breathe in holes?’ So that made me rea­lize that we spend a lot of time pre­pa­ring kids to play in band and for per­for­mances, but do we neces­sa­ri­ly make time for stu­dents to create their own music ? Usual­ly any form of music-making came after lear­ning mul­tiple units and years of music theo­ry, or music per­for­mance first. The­re’s such a hea­vy empha­sis on learn the theo­ry, learn the per­for­mance first, and then you get to create, rather than crea­ting a culture in our music pro­grams of being able to create from day one and ack­now­led­ging the musi­cal know­ledge that stu­dents alrea­dy bring in the classroom.

In the first couple of days, I’m asking stu­dents, ‘What is your pre­vious music expe­rience’ and a lot of stu­dents right away say, ‘I don’t have any’. I’m like, ‘Well, actual­ly you do because you lis­ten to music, you love it and appre­ciate it. You know what you like and dis­like, you can alrea­dy tell what sounds good and what doesn’t sound good.’ 

So I chal­lenge my stu­dents that they real­ly come into the class­room with exper­tise and it’s just a mat­ter of deve­lo­ping their lis­te­ning ear and music lite­ra­cy. It’s alrea­dy deve­lo­ping from that base know­ledge of what they do alrea­dy know. So that chal­len­ged me to think : are there ways for stu­dents to prac­tice making music from Day One ? Rather than having to wait after ten theo­ry les­sons, are there oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to create music from Day One ? And now when we start tea­ching about music theo­ry and per­for­mance and tech­nique, it’s with the idea of ‘Here’s some skills and tools to help you conti­nue crea­ting music. Here are some more things to help you unders­tand it and for you to be able to com­pose and create your own.’ 

One of the great things wor­king in my school is that we assess both out­comes and com­pe­ten­cies. So the out­comes are from the cur­ri­cu­lum and eve­ry options class iden­ti­fies three com­pe­ten­cies. For example, I eva­luate stu­dents on crea­ti­vi­ty, col­la­bo­ra­tion and per­so­nal growth. Each class has a list of nine pro­vi­ded by Alber­ta Ed. You pick two or three that are most rele­vant for your class content and you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to eva­luate stu­dents on those skills. Using that com­pe­ten­cy-based assess­ment, I was able to use, as we call them, crea­tive music chal­lenges. It was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to be given dif­ferent tasks and chal­lenges to help create their own music again, from Day One. I don’t wait until kids know how to play an ins­tru­ment, but from Day One. Then they can actual­ly see their growth and pro­cess, their pro­gress and their abi­li­ty to take more things that they’ve lear­ned from class and apply it to these crea­tive music chal­lenges and assess them more on the pro­cess of how they crea­ted the pro­duct : taking away that pres­sure from the final pro­duct and eva­lua­ting them on the pro­cess, eva­lua­ting them on their unders­tan­ding of the crea­tive pro­cess, and eva­lua­ting them on their abi­li­ty to col­la­bo­rate and work toge­ther to create a final musi­cal project. 

What I found was that there was quite a bit of a shift in my pro­gram culture. We crea­ted a culture in our music classes of crea­ting music from Day One, and have been inte­gra­ting it and allo­wing it to be part of the pro­gram. Stu­dents were less anxious about expe­ri­men­ting with music, around taking risks, even when they were taking risks with playing tests or per­for­mance tasks that we’re doing in class. It almost alle­via­ted some of that anxie­ty that stu­dents get. They’re more eager to expe­riment and try and if it goes wrong, like hey, okay it went wrong, espe­cial­ly when we star­ted tal­king about jazz improv and whe­ne­ver I star­ted crea­ting tasks around com­po­si­tions in my upper years for them to create. For example, in our pop song unit, they actual­ly have to com­pose and write their own pop songs and per­form it. So they they’re less anxious­ness or hesi­tan­cy to actual­ly try it, because we’ve crea­ted this culture of expe­ri­men­ting and trying from Day One through crea­tive tasks. 

I see the value in offe­ring these tasks to stu­dents and inte­gra­ting it into our pro­gram rather than let­ting it be this one off task that you do, but rather inte­grate it as part of your pro­gram and kno­wing too that you can assess so many other out­comes. For example, if you do a crea­tive music chal­lenges with ins­tru­ments right away, you can assess stu­dents” unders­tan­ding of their ins­tru­ment tech­nique and musi­cal phra­sing. The­re’s always ways to connect those out­comes back to the cur­ri­cu­lum. I see the value in the results of the stu­dents and the culture of my pro­gram, inte­gra­ting crea­ti­vi­ty as part of your music pro­gram, and valuing it as much as you value theo­ry, per­for­mance and history. 

My hope for music edu­ca­tion is that we can begin to move for­ward to decons­truc­ting that idea of ‘Here’s the music, I am the conduc­tor, I tell you what to do, and you lis­ten to those ins­truc­tions’, decons­truc­ting that idea of music edu­ca­tion and inte­gra­ting dif­ferent genres of music, dif­ferent pers­pec­tives and dif­ferent ways to create music.”

Whe­ther your school or com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion is in an urban, rural or remote area, the natu­ral envi­ron­ment is full of ins­pi­ra­tion for crea­ti­vi­ty and lear­ning. Louise Camp­bell leads par­ti­ci­pants in explo­ring and connec­ting with their natu­ral sur­roun­dings through sense walks on school grounds, public parks, and your own front stoop, bal­co­ny or backyard, and acti­vi­ties ins­pi­red by music.

Taking it Out­side : Making Music Ins­pi­red by Nature 
Cultu­ral media­tion acti­vi­ty for Sources, an album and ins­tal­la­tion fea­tu­ring music ins­pi­red by the St. Law­rence Seaway

PART ONE : Sense walks 

Sense walks are a varia­tion of sound walks, or walks in which par­ti­ci­pants bring their atten­tion to the sounds around you. For the pur­poses of this pro­ject, par­ti­ci­pants are asked to tap into three senses : sound, sight and touch (See down­loa­dable pdf for a print-able worksheet).

Mate­rials :

• Pen
• Han­dout (see down­loa­dable pdf)
• Wea­ther-appro­priate clothes and shoes

Start with where you are : 

1. Ask par­ti­ci­pants pay atten­tion to their sur­roun­dings and to write down : 
   • one sound that they hear (e.g. a sneeze, a car hon­king, a bird chir­ping etc.)
   • one item they see (e.g. a pen, a friend, a car, a tree)
   • a sen­sa­tion they feel (e.g. a breeze on their skin, warm, cold etc.) (n.b. par­ti­ci­pants often take this as an emo­tion, which is fine)
2. Ask volun­teers to share one of their observations.
3. Note the simi­la­ri­ties and dif­fe­rences bet­ween volun­teers’ obser­va­tions. Rein­force obser­ving sound and sen­sa­tions – other­wise, most obser­va­tions will be sight-based. Encou­rage obser­va­tion with grea­ter detail (e.g. I heard the car hon­king too – how far away do you think it was ? I mis­sed the bird – can you des­cribe its call to me ? What colour was the car you saw ? Can you des­cribe the sound it made?)
4. Explain the concept of a sense walk – a walk done without spea­king in which each per­son makes obser­va­tions of what they hear, see and feel. Ask par­ti­ci­pants to name places that look, sound and feel dif­ferent than where they are right now.
5. Brains­torm pos­sible routes and des­ti­na­tions for a sense walk. For example : 
   • School : through school hall­ways, past gym, and out front doors ; des­ti­na­tion : school yard ;
   • Neigh­bou­rhood : out front door, down street to alley, des­ti­na­tion : half­way down alley as far from city traf­fic as possible
   • Park : on or off paths, close and far from water, trees and traffic
6. When the route and des­ti­na­tion has been decided : 
   • Give a han­dout and pen or pen­cil to each participant
   • For out­door sense walks, pre­pare wea­ther-appro­priate clo­thing and footwear

Sense walk :

Remind par­ti­ci­pants that the goal is to make obser­va­tions without spea­king. Sha­ring will hap­pen at the end of the sense walk.

1. Par­ti­ci­pants write their obser­va­tions throu­ghout the walk, stop­ping as neces­sa­ry. Stop for a few minutes along the route in 2–3 par­ti­cu­lar­ly inter­es­ting places. These can be pre­de­ter­mi­ned or spon­ta­neous, fol­lo­wing any unex­pec­ted events that hap­pen en route. At the des­ti­na­tion, stop and conti­nue obser­ving for 4–5 minutes.
2. Ask volun­teers to share one of two obser­va­tions of what they heard, saw and felt over the course of the sense walk.
3. Go on mul­tiple sense walks ! Expe­riment with : 
   • dif­ferent routes and destinations,
   • indoor and out­door spaces,
   • times of day, and
   • sea­son.

Tips :

• Assi­gn a lea­der and a sweep. The lea­der leads rela­ti­ve­ly slow­ly so par­ti­ci­pants have a change to write, and so the group stays fair­ly close toge­ther. The sweep keeps an eye on the route and the rest of the group so that the par­ti­ci­pants who have the most to write don’t get left behind. Both the lea­der and the sweep should know the route and destination.
• Make sure all par­ti­ci­pants know where you are going and about how long the acti­vi­ty will take in advance. This helps par­ti­ci­pants unders­tand how long they are being asked to observe for and not chat with each other.
• Consi­der how far the walk is. With the aid of the han­dout and a varied walk, I find par­ti­ci­pants be atten­tive for up to 20 minutes without spea­king, depen­ding on age. If chat­ting starts (which usual­ly hap­pens around curio­si­ty about each other’s obser­va­tions), give a few minutes to par­ti­ci­pants to share with a friend, or with exchange as a group. Adapt the length of time to your group. I pre­fer star­ting with seve­ral obser­va­tion per­iods of shor­ter time frames, and giving the oppor­tu­ni­ty for par­ti­ci­pants to share their obser­va­tions, so they unders­tand qui­ck­ly how varied obser­va­tions can be from per­son to per­son. As the acti­vi­ty conti­nues, I usual­ly leng­then obser­va­tion time frames for the places par­ti­ci­pants have named as par­ti­cu­lar­ly interesting.
• When at a stop along the sense walk, name how long you are going to observe your sur­roun­dings for (e.g. 3 minutes). Use a visual aid to show where you are in the time per­iod to avoid the inevi­table ques­tion ‘how much longer?’

PART TWO : Ima­gi­ning place from music 

While lis­te­ning to a piece of pre-com­po­sed music such as Louise’s work Song­bird for ins­pi­ra­tion, ask par­ti­ci­pants to create an ima­gi­na­ry place, des­cri­bing this place through obser­va­tions of what they see, hear and feel.

Obser­va­tions from the sense walks can be used as neces­sa­ry. Some par­ti­ci­pants mix and match obser­va­tions from mul­tiple sense walks to create a new ima­gi­na­ry place ; others alter or make varia­tions of obser­va­tions, still others launch into sto­ry­tel­ling about an event or a place from their past, while others invent an enti­re­ly new world with fresh obser­va­tions. All of these ways are good. Once par­ti­ci­pants are rea­dy, ask volun­teers to des­cribe their ima­gi­na­ry place to each other.

This acti­vi­ty is part of the cultu­ral media­tion acti­vi­ties for Sources, Louise’s solo album and out­door ins­tal­la­tion fea­tu­ring music ins­pi­red by the St. Law­rence Sea­way. Co-crea­tion pro­cesses based on sense walks have led to impro­vi­sed sound­scapes, radio dra­mas and pod­casts, as well as Sources.

« Close your eyes and ima­gine this scene. You walk along the bright orange and red san­dy shores of the Mag­da­len Islands… pay atten­tion to the sounds, to the wind, observe and then gather some of those sounds and craft those into a sto­ry. That’s part of what’s been hap­pe­ning at the Grosse Ile School with Tea­ching Artist Louise Camp­bell… » Ali­son Bru­nette, CBC Brea­ka­way (2019)

For examples of crea­tive pro­cesses fol­lo­wed by various dif­ferent groups, see media below for :

• Novem­ber Storm, a radio dra­ma crea­ted by Gr. 7 stu­dents at Grosse-Île School, Mag­da­len Islands
• Taking It Out­side, a music video crea­ted by Que­bec Homes­choo­lers of ima­gi­na­ry places ins­pi­red by sense walks and Louise’s Songbird
• Images cap­tu­red during sense walks

Inter­es­ted schools and orga­ni­za­tions are invi­ted to contact Louise at mlouisecampbell(at)gmail.com for details. Faci­li­ta­tion is avai­lable in-per­son and vir­tual­ly via zoom. Lis­ten to the album HERE.

This pro­ject are sup­por­ted by Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Cana­da, Ville de Mont­réal, and the pro­gram Mont­réal cultu­relle, verte et rési­liente, Inno­va­tions en concert, Audio­to­pie, Bra­dy­works / Ins­tru­ments of Hap­pi­ness, Ville en vert, La TOHU.

This col­la­bo­ra­tive pro­ject took place in the spring of 2022 with Den­nis Shor­ty and mem­bers of the Fidd­le­heads, a youth fiddle ensemble in Whi­te­horse. The pro­ject focu­sed on fin­ding ways to inte­grate a local First Nations sto­ries and musi­cal expe­riences into pri­vate les­sons and ensemble music classes.

ABOUT THE PEOPLE :

Pri­vate Fiddle Tea­cher Kei­tha Clark : 

Kei­tha Clark lives and teaches in Whi­te­horse, Yukon, on the tra­di­tio­nal ter­ri­to­ry of the Kwan­lin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwä­ch’än Coun­cil. Her stu­dents range in age from 7–15, and her prac­tice focuses on connec­ting com­mu­ni­ties and cultures through fidd­ling. Kei­tha has a a pri­vate stu­dio with 25 stu­dents in Whi­te­horse and has also foun­ded fiddle pro­grams in Tes­lin and Haines Junc­tion. She is cur­rent­ly wor­king on her Mas­ters of Edu­ca­tion with a focus on how to improve arts pro­gram­ming deli­ve­ry in remote nor­thern communities.

Elder Den­nis Shorty :

Den­nis is a Kas­ka musi­cian, artist and know­ledge kee­per from the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross River, Yukon. His music is writ­ten in the Kas­ka Dena lan­guage and cele­brates the land, ani­mals, res­pect, ances­tors and tra­di­tions. Den­nis and his part­ner, Jen­ni­fer Fröh­ling, per­form as Dena Zagi. They have played venues in Cana­da and Ger­ma­ny, and their album, Gucho Hin, was nomi­na­ted for both an Indi­ge­nous Music Award and a Cana­dian Folk Music Award.

ABOUT THE PROJECT (FROM KEITHA):

I have wor­ked with Den­nis and Jen­ny for seve­ral years. I first met them at a com­mu­ni­ty BBQ while tea­ching fiddle at the school in Ross River, and we ended up jam­ming in their garage that eve­ning (super fun!). I went on to be part of their band and played at various fes­ti­vals and com­mu­ni­ty gathe­rings in the Yukon with them.

This pro­ject grew out of a com­mis­sion I recei­ved to arrange a ver­sion of Den­nis’ song, Gucho Hin (Ancestor’s Song), for the All City Band (with The Fidd­le­heads) for their spring 2022 concert. This was a large ensemble arran­ge­ment for 60 musi­cians with 25 dif­ferent ins­tru­men­tal parts. (The All City Band suc­cess­ful­ly applied for fun­ding from the Yukon Govern­ment to cover fees for Den­nis and Jen­ny, the com­mis­sion, tra­vel costs, venue and recording.)

Check out the video clip of the All City Band/Fiddleheads per­for­ming Gucho Hin.

This com­po­si­tion pro­ject was deve­lo­ped out of a desire to create addi­tio­nal oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to explore and respond to Den­nis” story.

EXPLORING FIRST NATIONS WAYS OF KNOWING, DOING AND BEING THROUGH COMPOSITION

Pro­ject Goals

• Create a short, ori­gi­nal com­po­si­tion that responds to the expe­riences, sto­ries and culture Den­nis Shor­ty shares in this lear­ning video.
• Reflect and engage with dif­ferent cultures using non-Euro­cen­tric ways of kno­wing, doing and being.
• Explo­ring how you can use the ele­ments of music to express your own ideas and emo­tions, as well as reflect the ideas and emo­tions of others.

Pro­ject Stages 

Stage One – Col­la­bo­ra­tive Brains­tor­ming (via Zoom – 45 minutes)

Stu­dents gathe­red on Zoom to watch Den­nis” lear­ning video, dis­cuss the main themes and ideas, and explore how they wan­ted to connect those ideas to their own crea­tive res­ponse using the ele­ments of music. 

Stage Two – Inde­pendent Com­po­si­tion Deve­lop­ment (2–4 hours per student)

Stu­dents used the basic ele­ments of music (pitch, rhythm, timbre, temp, dyna­mics, etc.) to convey their ideas. Examples include using ascen­ding scale frag­ments to convey the moun­tain pass Den­nis’ fami­ly would climb ; using piz­zi­ca­to to convey Den­nis’ Grand­ma picking ber­ries ;  incor­po­ra­ting minor scales and bars with extra beats to convey the uncer­tain­ty and sad­ness of Den­nis being taken away to resi­den­tial school.

(See below to view and down­load the Crea­tive Para­me­ters Han­dout used in this project.)

Stage Three – Ins­truc­tor Feedback/ Recor­ding Prep (1 hour)

Stu­dents wor­ked in Garage Band to record and arrange their com­po­si­tions inde­pen­dent­ly. (We were honou­red to have Den­nis and Jen­ny create a spe­cial tra­di­tio­nal drum track for the stu­dents to work with as they were wri­ting as well.)

Once stu­dents had a first draft com­ple­ted, they emai­led Kei­tha the audio for feed­back. Stu­dents then had two days to make the final adjust­ments on their com­po­si­tions and cla­ri­fy their arrangements.

Stage Four- Recor­ding the com­po­si­tions (15–30 minutes)

For the video, stu­dents were asked to intro­duce them­selves and their topic, the land­scape or expe­rience they were wri­ting about, thank Den­nis for sha­ring his sto­ry, include an expla­na­tion of how they used the ele­ments of music to express their ideas and brie­fly des­cribe how this pro­ject chan­ged how they think about music.

Stage Five – Student Feed­back (30 minutes)

After wat­ching each other’s per­for­mances, stu­dents were asked to pro­vide feed­back to their peers. (Because the pro­ject was most­ly online, stu­dents crea­ted writ­ten feed­back on Pad­let for this.)

Feed­back cri­te­ria included :

• A com­pli­ment-  Be spe­ci­fic, did you like how they used a cer­tain scale, dyna­mic, rhythm etc. to convey their idea, or a unique pers­pec­tive they brought to their tune idea ?
• A com­ment on a way that they refe­ren­ced Dennis’s sto­ry or idea- What did you like about the way that they did this ? Is there any­thing you would like to see more of ?
• A ques­tion – What kind of ques­tion would encou­rage the com­po­ser to take their work to the next level ? Examples include : What would you change about your piece if you were wri­ting this again ? What was your favou­rite part about this pro­ject ? Has this pro­ject chan­ged how you view music ?

Conclu­sion

I loved doing this pro­ject with the fidd­lers ! They crea­ted work that sho­wed a lot of lis­te­ning and lear­ning ; both about the sto­ries and expe­riences Den­nis sha­red, and for how to find mea­ning­ful ways to reflect and respond to those expe­riences through music.

It was also ama­zing wor­king with Den­nis and Jen­ny for this pro­ject ! I was honou­red to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty, and gra­te­ful to Den­nis and Jen­ny for their willin­gness to share their music and sto­ries with our community.

Below are three examples of what the fidd­lers com­po­sed and reflec­tions on their learning :

• Jack
• Noé
• Owen

Thoughts

Here are a few thoughts about this pro­ject and why com­po­si­tion is an impor­tant part of crea­ting cultu­ral unders­tan­ding (view video here).

Trans­crip­tion :

I thought this pro­ject was real­ly suc­cess­ful because the kids are real­ly enga­ged in the work, and we were able to reflect Den­nis” sto­ries and expe­rience in real­ly mea­ning­ful ways. I think one of the most power­ful things we can deve­lop as musi­cians is the abi­li­ty not just to create but to lis­ten in a real deep and mea­ning­ful way. I think the kids were able to do this with this pro­ject, and show true lis­te­ning to Den­nis” sto­ries and then show a real mea­ning­ful res­ponse by how they approa­ched wri­ting their tunes and what they reflec­ted in their pieces. 

To me that was the most satis­fying part of the pro­ject, get­ting to see them deve­lop those lis­te­ning skills and then be able to respond with their own crea­tive voices to what Den­nis’ sto­ries and expe­riences were. I think that’s such a gift of the crea­tive pro­cess : to be able to give young musi­cians the chance to lis­ten to expe­riences and sto­ries from dif­ferent cultures and find ways to mea­ning­ful­ly respond to those with the musi­cal skills they have and that they can deve­lop through these projects.

“In a way the world is a huge com­po­si­tion – a huge musi­cal com­po­si­tion that’s going on all the time, without a begin­ning and pre­su­ma­bly without an ending. We are the com­po­sers of this huge mira­cu­lous com­po­si­tion that’s going on around us and we can improve it, or we can des­troy it. We can add more noises, or we can add more beau­ti­ful sounds. It’s all up to us.” (R. Mur­ray Scha­fer in Lis­ten (2009), a docu­men­ta­ry film.)

In this pro­ject, music edu­ca­tor Edmee Nata­pra­wi­ra and her stu­dents in the Prep Choir of VIVA Sin­gers Toron­to build com­mu­ni­ty vir­tual­ly through crea­tive sin­ging and music making : 

Hi, my name is Edmee Nata­pra­wi­ra. I use she/her pro­nouns. I live and teach in Toron­to, Ontario.

My stu­dents are in the Prep Choir, the youn­gest divi­sion of sin­gers at VIVA Sin­gers Toron­to. Though a small group this year, we come from many dif­ferent back­grounds, with diverse gen­der iden­ti­ties, cultu­ral heri­tages, needs, and strengths. For the past two years, we had a ful­ly online sea­son due to the ongoing pan­de­mic. We are loo­king for­ward to making music in-per­son again, star­ting next sea­son. For most of the stu­dents in the Prep Choir, VIVA is their first expe­rience making music with others in an ensemble setting. 

Our pro­gram includes the inte­gra­tion of crea­tive music-making and com­po­si­tion with the deve­lop­ment of cho­ral per­for­mance skills. We sing a varie­ty of reper­toire, often wor­king clo­se­ly with guest artists – like Suba San­ka­ran and Auto­rick­shaw in our most recent sea­son. New to the VIVA pro­gram is our Crea­tion Stream, which builds com­po­si­tion skills through a varie­ty of mediums. The fol­lo­wing are two acti­vi­ties we use in the Crea­tion Stream : 

Crea­tion Stream

1. Star­ting well with pre-school vir­tual choir : This is an acti­vi­ty that high­lights how we often begin our rehear­sals. The goal is to set the tone for student crea­tion and to encou­rage stu­dents to hold expan­sive defi­ni­tions of music, so that they see that music is eve­ryw­here. Using found objects from their home envi­ron­ment, stu­dents explore and share per­cus­sive sounds. They then inte­grate their sounds into the B Sec­tion of our wel­come song. View video below or see this link.
2. A crea­tive approach to tea­ching cho­ral reper­toire : This is ano­ther exer­cise that demons­trates a crea­tive approach to tea­ching cho­ral reper­toire. We had been wor­king on the tune “Don’t Wor­ry Be Hap­py” in pre­pa­ra­tion for the spring concert ; in this video, we are crea­ting a coda for the song. The video shows the kids making connec­tions to things that make them hap­py in their own lives. We then draw out key words from these per­so­nal connec­tions and use repe­ti­tion to create rhyth­mic pat­terns, spea­king the words before applying them to our found ins­tru­ments. The stu­dents then use rhythm syl­lables to notate their crea­tions and later explo­red com­po­sing short melo­dies as well. 

Suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion ?

Click here to view video or read on for transcription.

Trans­crip­tion : “What is a suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion ? I asked my stu­dents at Viva Sin­gers Toron­to in the pre­pa­ra­to­ry choirs, the youn­gest sin­gers, what they real­ly love about choir or what they real­ly love about music. Three major themes came out : sin­ging, ins­tru­ments and happiness. 

1. Sin­ging : The first came as no sur­prise that the student said that they loved to sing in choir. Sin­ging is the main medium through which we make music and so it’s real­ly what we’re doing most of the time when we’re rehearsing. 
2. Ins­tru­ments : The second is a lit­tle more laye­red and a num­ber of stu­dents brought up that they real­ly like playing ins­tru­ments. The ins­tru­ment that came up a lot was pia­no, spe­ci­fi­cal­ly pri­vate pia­no les­sons taken out­side of choir time and out­side of school time. I do want to note that during choir prac­tice, we often incor­po­rate found ins­tru­ments such as tin cans, soap boxes, paper towel rolls, Klee­nex boxes, all sorts of found unpit­ched per­cus­sion. I also wan­ted to note that those found objects were also part of this category. 
3. Hap­pi­ness : Third, although simple, I think this is the heart of music edu­ca­tion. The kids said that choir makes them feel hap­py, that they feel hap­py when they are sin­ging. I think that is the core of what suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion is. 

For me, in reflec­ting on that ques­tion on that prompt, three major themes came up as well. com­mu­ni­ty and connec­tion, pro­cess orien­ted prac­tice and a life­time prac­tice.

1. Com­mu­ni­ty and connec­tion : The first, com­mu­ni­ty and connec­tion, for me is all about how music making, espe­cial­ly music making in an ensemble, so in choir or in class, you’re with other people, and you have to be able to work with other people, create with other people, com­pose, rehearse, share one’s music. It’s not some­thing that you can do by your­self. And I think that is at the core of suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion. This remin­ded me of a stu­dy that I heard about a num­ber of years ago and I loo­ked at the the people behind the stu­dy, Kir­sch­ner and Toma­sel­lo, on joint music making pro­mo­ting pro-social beha­vior in kids. The pre­mise of it is that being toge­ther in time and having sha­red musi­cal expe­riences helps people want to be more help­ful, altruis­tic, empa­the­tic. Aren’t those all things that we want in our com­mu­ni­ty ? Pret­ty outs­tan­ding, I think that music can play a role in that. 
2. Pro­cess-orien­ted music edu­ca­tion : The second ele­ment of music edu­ca­tion being pro­cess-orien­ted, has to do with the steps that are taken in the lead up towards a pro­duct. So I think often we think about music edu­ca­tion as being all about the per­for­mances. While I do think per­for­mance is valuable, and can be real­ly quite magi­cal, I think that the way you get there is more impor­tant than the concert itself. So for me, pro­cess-orien­ted music edu­ca­tion involves stu­dents making deci­sions that impact the expe­rience itself. So stu­dents making deci­sions either in terms of com­po­sing and crea­ting the music, or in terms of the rehear­sal pro­cess, or direc­tion that the rehear­sal takes, the pacing. All of those dif­ferent deci­sions are empo­we­ring stu­dents to be part of that pro­cess. I think that’s real­ly key to suc­cess­ful music education. 
3. A life­time prac­tice : The third idea of a life­time prac­tice goes to some­thing that Dr. John Feie­ra­bend calls the 30 year plan. Here the idea is that as a music tea­cher, you aren’t only tea­ching the chil­dren in front of you, you’re tea­ching them such that they might become adults who feel com­for­table sin­ging hap­py bir­th­day with their friends, who feel com­for­table dan­cing at the wed­dings they attend, and should they choose to have chil­dren of their own some­day, that they would feel com­for­table sin­ging a lul­la­by to the kids in their life as adults when they grow up. So that is ano­ther impor­tant part of suc­cess­ful music education. 

I want to pull up the core values of Viva Sin­gers Toron­to. So there is that ele­ment of per­for­mance artis­try, high­ligh­ting a sin­ging vocal music edu­ca­tion, the idea that music edu­ca­tion needs to be for eve­ry­bo­dy. Lea­der­ship and men­to­ring can be a key aspect of music edu­ca­tion, and com­mu­ni­ty. Again, it’s all about rela­tion­ship. In order to have a suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion pro­gram, it has to be about community.” 

Thoughts on crea­tive music-making 

See here to view video, or read on for transcription.

Trans­crip­tion : “What drew me towards crea­tive music making in my own tea­ching prac­tice was, to be honest, the pan­de­mic. I think that when music edu­ca­tion as I had known it no lon­ger was pos­sible, I was real­ly chal­len­ged to reflect on what the pur­pose of music edu­ca­tion was. Why was I doing what I was doing before the pan­de­mic ? And is that some­thing that I want to be doing after, if there ever real­ly is an after ? 

In reflec­ting on the pur­pose of music edu­ca­tion and fin­ding myself with more ques­tions than ans­wers, what I found was that I had more room to expe­riment. I had more room to try dif­ferent things out, to let my stu­dents try dif­ferent things out and I’d dis­co­ver that that’s actual­ly a lot of fun, and real­ly, real­ly valuable. So what drew me to crea­tive music making prac­tice was an inabi­li­ty to do music as it always has been, and space, time, ener­gy and crea­ti­vi­ty from my stu­dents to expe­riment with some­thing new. 

How might crea­tive music making help access the cen­ter of music, lis­te­ning and soun­ding prac­tices that my stu­dents bring to the class­room ? Well, I think as tea­chers, one of our big­gest jobs is to get out of the way of stu­dents’ lear­ning. That is not a concept that I’ve come up with myself, but that a very res­pec­ted col­league of mine has sha­red with me in the past, and I just think it’s such a great phrase : get out of the way of stu­dents’ lear­ning. Crea­tive music making helps us make room for the stu­dents and it helps us step back as their teachers.

What are my hopes for music edu­ca­tion for my stu­dents as of broa­der prac­tice ? Well, I would real­ly love for more people to expe­rience the joys of music making. My hope is that all stu­dents feel able to engage ful­ly and stretch them­selves in music at a high level, and not just those who have been tra­di­tio­nal­ly suc­cess­ful, often with the sup­port of pri­vate les­sons or spe­cial pro­grams. I feel like eve­ry­bo­dy should be able to expe­rience music in its most won­der­ful form. 

And my hope is that we move away from the mis­con­cep­tion that crea­tive music edu­ca­tion com­pro­mises the qua­li­ty of the chil­dren’s musi­cal expe­riences. I don’t think that’s true. I think in actua­li­ty, crea­tive music edu­ca­tion enhances it. And so that’s some­thing that I want to explore more and that I hope as tea­ching prac­tice as a broa­der prac­tice, we’re able to explore and expe­riment with toge­ther as well. » 

For more infor­ma­tion, contact Edmee at edmee.nataprawira(at)gmail.com.

Ele­men­ta­ry Music School Tea­cher Kathe­rine Fra­ser and her stu­dents lis­ten, impro­vise, com­pose, and reflect on these crea­tive school music experiences :

« Hi, my name is Kathe­rine Fra­ser. I live and teach in Toron­to, ON. My stu­dents are Grades 1–8 at Jean Lumb Public School. Our music pro­gram includes lis­te­ning, crea­ting, making sounds, making sounds sound dif­ferent, expe­ri­men­ting, dis­co­ve­ring, dan­cing, and celebrating, 

Here are some games that focus on lis­te­ning and crea­ting :

• Emp­ty Repea­ting Can­vas
• Impro­vi­sing to gra­phic notation
• Sym­bol chalk­board gra­phic score

Here is ano­ther exer­cise that builds a groove with impro­vi­sed loops

• Buil­ding a groove

Here is a video of stu­dents com­po­sing using their own ori­gi­nal notation

• Stu­dents com­po­sing using their own notation

What Does Suc­cess­ful Music Ed Mean To You ?

Here is  a video of my stu­dents and me reflec­ting on what suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion means to us, or read on for the transcription :

Kathe­rine Faser : “Today we are dis­cus­sing what suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion means to you. So, any ideas ?

Student #1 : “It means any­time that we get to come in here and learn about music and play dif­ferent instruments.” 

Student #2 : “ I also think that in a pro­gram like this, you come here and you explore what you want, even if you’ve never done it before. [The pro­gram] has a big impact on the music itself, and I think it’s a real­ly great expe­rience if you to come here to learn and prac­tice and just express your­self in music.” 

Kathe­rine Fra­ser : “Express your­self. And for me, a suc­cess­ful music pro­gram is that my stu­dents come in and they feel real­ly self confi­dent to take risks when we are impro­vi­sing, com­po­sing, but also when we’re rehear­sing and per­for­ming. That they see them­selves as musi­cians in this space. Any­thing else?” 

Student #1 : “I think it’s impor­tant that we’re actual­ly lear­ning the cor­rect thing. Like when you teach us a song, we learn where it ori­gi­na­ted, or who made it and things like that So we’re actual­ly pro­per­ly learning.” 

Kathe­rine Fra­ser : “I agree. Do you have any­thing else you wan­ted to add?” 

Student #2 : “I could add that I think it is real­ly fun that we come here and you teach us cer­tain music styles and then you give us a chance to turn it around and maybe com­pose some­thing that we thought of and use the impor­tant facts and feelings. 

Kathe­rine Fra­ser : “Love it. And the last thing I wan­ted to say was that it is real­ly impor­tant to me that my stu­dents feel seen and heard and the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as well, and that they’re repre­sen­ted here in the room and in the pro­gram, and that I don’t make all the deci­sions on where the units are going next, where the les­sons are going next, what songs we do for shows. We deci­ded that toge­ther. Any last thoughts ? 

What’s your favo­rite sub­ject in the whole school ? (laughs) That’s a loa­ded ques­tion. All right. Thank you.”

What brought you to crea­tive music ? 

View this video for my thoughts on crea­tive music making or read on for the transcription :

« Hel­lo, my name is Kathe­rine Fra­ser and I am the grade one to eight music tea­cher here at Jean Lumb Public School in down­town Toron­to. I’m here to ans­wer a couple of questions. 

The first one is, ‘What drew you towards this music making in your own tea­ching prac­tice?’ The ans­wer to that is twofold.

First, it’s cir­cum­stances. This contract I’m in now is my thir­teenth contract in my fourth pro­vince in seven­teen years. So eve­ry music job I’ve had has had dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties, dif­ferent stu­dents, dif­ferent expec­ta­tions, dif­ferent ins­tru­ments. I’ve had to become a very crea­tive tea­cher and adapt. That has also given me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reinvent myself eve­ry couple of years or two, and the­re­fore I have been able to try new things. 

The second part of it is curio­si­ty because I noti­ced that lis­te­ning games and acti­vi­ties and com­po­si­tion impro­vi­sa­tion units defi­ni­te­ly ins­pire more crea­ti­vi­ty and exci­te­ment than tech­nique-based les­sons wor­king up to a per­for­mance. So with crea­tive music making, more stu­dents became invol­ved in my pro­gram, and it became our music pro­gram. It was less tea­cher-dri­ven, less mine. 

Crea­tive music making has moved in my tea­ching prac­tice from one aspect of the pro­gram to the main focus. 

Also, I’ve found ways of cele­bra­ting crea­tive music making in concerts. A concrete example is this year I part­ne­red with the awe­some music pro­ject www.theawesomemusicproject.com here in Toron­to. It  is a Toron­to-based orga­ni­za­tion that cele­brates music sto­ries, and fun­drai­sers to bene­fit men­tal health. I had the stu­dents go home and fill out a Google form with their fami­lies inter­vie­wing someone about their favo­rite song and the sto­ry behind that song. Then the classes and I lis­te­ned to the song selec­tions, chose one per class. We arran­ged and lear­ned a ver­sion of it with the ins­tru­ments avai­lable to us. For the concert, it was a video where it had the cho­sen song’s fami­ly making  an intro­duc­tion about why it was impor­tant to them, fol­lo­wed by the class” per­for­mance of that song. It real­ly brought the com­mu­ni­ty voices in and it was a very crea­tive, whole school, long project. 

How am I hel­ping centre my stu­dents” music lis­te­ning and soun­ding prac­tices ? I find when stu­dents create their own music, they’re brin­ging their own music pre­fe­rences into their pro­jects. So right now, Jean Lumb Public School stu­dents are wor­king on a com­po­si­tion unit. The first part is done in Sound­trap and Gara­ge­Band, They were encou­ra­ged to import files into their pieces so they could either record them­selves making music or bring in some You­Tube sound files. Then the next part of the pro­ject had them using Wes­tern Euro­pean clas­si­cal music nota­tion. So they were wri­ting on a staff with notes but they were able to choose wha­te­ver ins­tru­ment that they wan­ted that we explo­red before the unit. That free­dom real­ly helps them find success. 

Right now we’re on the last part, which is ori­gi­nal scores and so the stu­dents can deve­lop their own nota­tion. Some are ins­pi­red by gra­phic scores, and they are real­ly rising to the occa­sion. Their ori­gi­nal scores are so intri­guing, so crea­tive, and so their own. 

And last­ly, what are your hopes for music edu­ca­tion ? That music tea­chers find the sup­port and confi­dence they need to demons­trate to their stu­dents, their admi­nis­tra­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty that music edu­ca­tion does not have to focus sole­ly on the pre­pa­ra­tion and exe­cu­tion of Remem­brance Day, win­ter and spring concerts fea­tu­ring Wes­tern Euro­pean com­po­sers and instruments. 

The­re’s more. Stu­dents deserve more, and though per­for­mance might be a pas­sion for some, it’s not for all. Stu­dents and tea­chers need to lis­ten to more music, more sounds, and more voices. Pro­grams need to be com­pre­hen­sive and cover all aspects of Music Edu­ca­tion : crea­ting, lis­te­ning, cele­bra­ting, per­for­ming, resear­ching hea­ling, rei­ma­gi­ning, and won­de­ring. Thanks for listening. » 

For more infor­ma­tion, contact Kathe­rine at Katherine.fraser(at)tdsb.on.ca.

A music video pro­ject by the duo Sii­juu Jaa­das Cool Ladies, consis­ting of Hai­da Elder, wea­ver, and lan­guage tea­cher Jiixa (age 84), along with set­tler Julia (age 25). Julia makes the music and film for Jiixa’s lan­guage-sha­ring. The two share a deep bond and a sense of humour that com­mu­ni­cates the Hai­da lan­guage in crea­tive new ways. They are ins­pi­red by Hai­da laws and ways of being, by the power of food and laugh­ter in brin­ging people toge­ther, and by the land and other beings that they share home with on Hai­da Gwaii.

Pre­ser­ving Lan­guage Through Music and Film
Behind the Scenes : Sii­juu Jaa­das Cool Ladies – Hai­da Lan­guage Rap Duo
By Julia Weder, May 2022

Intro : Here is a brief guide on how I approach making music videos with Hai­da Elder and lan­guage tea­cher Jiixa (Gla­dys Van­dal), invol­ving the Xaay­da kil (Hai­da lan­guage, Ski­de­gate dialect).

Quick context on the people invol­ved : Jiixa is like a nanaay (grand­mo­ther) to me. Des­pite being an adop­ted mem­ber of her clan, Ski­de­gate Gidins Naa ‘Uuwans Xaay­da­Ga, it is not my place as a set­tler to claim a sense of owner­ship of the lan­guage. This lan­guage pro­ject was inten­ded to sup­port Jiixa in her own lan­guage-sha­ring and crea­tive visions, as she is huge­ly moti­va­ted to share the lan­guage now that she is diag­no­sed with ALS and has limi­ted mobi­li­ty. As a resident of Hai­da Gwaii and someone com­mit­ted to advan­cing Hai­da sove­rei­gn­ty and res­pec­ting Hai­da law on these lands, I see lear­ning the Hai­da lan­guage as an impor­tant part of this life­long com­mit­ment. I car­ry this gra­ti­tude and pri­vi­lege with me throu­ghout these crea­tive pro­jects with Jiixa. And gee, we have a lot of fun.

STEP 1 : Reflect on your place, res­pon­si­bi­li­ties, and the nuances of your pro­po­sed project.

What is your posi­tio­na­li­ty within the com­mu­ni­ty or folks you are enga­ged with ? What are the pro­per pro­to­cols to fol­low when enga­ging with the Hai­da lan­guage (or any Indi­ge­nous lan­guage or cultu­ral prac­tice)? What are you doing to ensure you are moving beyond “good inten­tions” and prac­ti­cing real self-awa­re­ness ? What is your know­ledge on the topic, and what kind of autho­ri­ty do you have on it ? What is the qua­li­ty of the rela­tion­ships you have built ? Who has control over what is sha­red, and how ? Who bene­fits from (or is har­med by) the work ?

STEP 2 : Think of a theme or sub­ject for your music video.

We thought of han­dy phrases that fami­lies on Hai­da Gwaii might use in eve­ry­day life – eg. around the house, in the kit­chen, on a trip. We wan­ted to mix these in with expres­sions of love and friend­ship, as well as prayers and wise phrases from Hai­da Elders that have been pre­ser­ved. We chose themes like “Food and Friend­ship”, “Tra­ve­ling to the City”, and “Remem­be­ring Lost Children”.

STEP 3 : Have fun and expe­riment with film

We didn’t take our­selves too serious­ly at all when making these rap songs. At spon­ta­neous moments – say, after a meal while sit­ting on the couch – I’d take out my iPhone and ask if Jiixa wan­ted to record snip­pets of video for our next rap song. “Sure!”, she’d smile. We didn’t wor­ry about miming lyrics or any­thing in these snip­pets – we just groo­ved our heads or hips to an ima­gi­na­ry beat, maybe wea­ring a pair of sun­glasses or a hat that was lying around.

STEP 4 : Work on the lyrics.

Jiixa wrote the lyrics for each of our songs, some­times get­ting ins­pi­ra­tion from Hai­da lan­guage books pro­du­ced by the group of Elders invol­ved in the Ski­de­gate Hai­da Immer­sion Pro­gram. I would write down phrases or words that she’d speak out, and repeat them back to her until she was hap­py with the flow and content. Some­times Jiixa wan­ted me to speak/sing the lyrics. Once we had the lyrics writ­ten, we’d audio-record our­selves on the Voice Recor­ding app on our phones.

STEP 5 : Work on the music.

In Gara­ge­Band (free on Apple devices), I made simple beats from the com­pu­ter-key­board within the soft­ware (you can choose from a whole range of ins­tru­ment sounds). I’d make a simple tune over top of a bas­sy beat, then I’d adjust the tem­po of the music until it rough­ly mat­ched the tem­po of our speech / sin­ging / lyrics.

STEP 6 : Edit

This is a fair­ly time-consu­ming pro­cess but lots of fun. I used free soft­ware (iMo­vie) on my Mac­book to edit toge­ther the audio clips, video clips, and music. First I expor­ted the song and lyrics from Gara­ge­band, and impor­ted it into iMo­vie. Then I impor­ted all the video clips and mat­ched them up with the lyrics and music. We added intro and clo­sing slides with our names and eve­ryone who hel­ped out with the project.

STEP 7 : Add sub­titles / captions

It’s good prac­tice to include cap­tions in any video, regard­less of lan­guage, so that it’s acces­sible to non-hea­ring folks. Since our videos are in Hai­da, and the goal was to help people become more fami­liar with the lan­guage and pick up new words and phrases, we’d spell out Hai­da cap­tions in large font and English under­neath, in smal­ler font.

STEP 8 : Share with the community !

We share our videos on Face­book and You­tube, and invite our friends and com­mu­ni­ty to give it a watch. We hope that these videos help moti­vate others to tell sto­ries and use the Hai­da lan­guage in their own crea­tive ways.

Julia’s email is julia.weder@gmail.com. Feel free to get in touch !

Nathan Gage and his stu­dents des­cribe and reflect on their crea­tive work as musi­cians, bands and pro­du­cers in their class­room recor­ding spaces.

Here is a des­crip­tion of a secon­da­ry music pro­gram that draws upon popu­lar music in an effort to engage stu­dents with mea­ning­ful music making expe­riences. The program’s empha­sis on musi­cal crea­tion culmi­nates in the annual release of an album-length “mix­tape” of ori­gi­nal songs which the stu­dents have crea­ted. Cur­rent and pre­vious mix­tapes can be found at www.upnextrecordings.com.

James Lyng music stu­dents choose bet­ween two “streams” to best match their musi­cal pre­fe­rence and ambitions :

• the “band” stream, with an empha­sis on ins­tru­men­tal per­for­mance of rock and pop music, col­lec­tive song­wri­ting and recording
• the “stu­dio” stream, in which stu­dents work alone or in small groups on song­wri­ting, recor­ding or beat-making pro­jects, usual­ly, but not exclu­si­ve­ly in the Hip Hop or R&B genres.

This is pre­sen­ted not neces­sa­ri­ly as a model to imi­tate but an illu­mi­na­tion of the pos­si­bi­li­ties of the many forms a student-cen­tred, com­mu­ni­ty based pro­gram can take in a cur­ri­cu­lar context.

Who

Hi, my name is Nathan Gage. I live and teach music in the south-west of Mon­treal, Que­bec. James Lyng is a public high school that caters to a small, diverse student popu­la­tion, most of whom face signi­fi­cant chal­lenges. Many of our stu­dents come from neigh­bou­rhood fami­lies living at or below the pover­ty line. Our school also hosts pro­grams that give addi­tio­nal sup­port to stu­dents with spe­cial needs and beha­viou­ral chal­lenges. Approxi­ma­te­ly 80% of our student popu­la­tion is coded with some kind of beha­viou­ral or aca­de­mic chal­lenge. Here is a research article about our pro­gram.

Here is an intro video about our music pro­gram : The High School With A Hip Hop Program.

When I first sought to create a music pro­gram cen­tred around popu­lar music, I came to the conclu­sion that if I wan­ted to hook my stu­dents, I nee­ded to give them control in deter­mi­ning what sort of music-making acti­vi­ties they were car­rying out, as well as what genres of music they were enga­ging with.

How

The ini­tial infra­struc­ture for the pro­gram was finan­cial­ly sup­por­ted by a McGill Uni­ver­si­ty research pro­ject. A pro­fes­sio­nal-qua­li­ty recor­ding stu­dio was ins­tal­led in the base­ment of our high school, and for the first three years of the pro­gram, the research project’s bud­get paid to hire pro­du­cers / rap­pers with whom I col­la­bo­ra­ted in the edu­ca­tion of my music stu­dents. Since the com­ple­tion of McGill’s invol­ve­ment four years ago, we’ve mana­ged to keep the vision of the music pro­gram alive, through ever-chan­ging sources of fun­ding – various grants avai­lable to us because of our sta­tus as a “have-not” school, as well as pockets of fun­ding from within our school board.

What it sounds and looks like

• James Lyng Stu­dio Creation

This video shows stu­dents at work in a typi­cal class of our “stu­dio” stream. Stu­dents wor­king on the stu­dio side work almost exclu­si­ve­ly on music crea­tion pro­jects – either beat-making or wri­ting and recor­ding ori­gi­nal songs. They work indi­vi­dual­ly or in small groups.

• James Lyng Ins­tru­men­tal Creation

This video shows a small por­tion of the crea­tive work that goes in our “band” stream. While much of our school year is devo­ted to lear­ning covers of pop and rock songs, each of our band classes will write and record a song annual­ly to be inclu­ded on the mix­tape. Songs are writ­ten col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve­ly by the whole group.

This video focuses on two groups. The first is my grade 7 class. The class had alrea­dy com­po­sed chords and a riff for two sec­tions of the song. One was a chord pro­gres­sion which we col­lec­ti­ve­ly com­po­sed by ana­ly­zing and rear­ran­ging the chords from Bill Withers’ song “Just The Two Of Us”. The class sug­ges­ted and audi­tio­ned a num­ber of com­bi­na­tions of the chords before voting on a final chord pro­gres­sion. A riff for the second sec­tion of the song was brought to the group by one of the class’s gui­tar players. The class had also col­lec­ti­ve­ly writ­ten four lines of lyrics based on their expe­riences in qua­ran­tine. To write these lyrics, they brains­tor­med a num­ber of words and phrases based on the theme and used them to create a series of rhy­ming couplets.

The video starts with some of the stu­dents “MIDI-recor­ding” melo­dies over a “mock up” recor­ding of the two sec­tions that I pre­pa­red. The key­board has been reca­li­bra­ted so that stu­dents can focus on the white keys to create their melo­dies. This is some­thing I do with my youn­gest stu­dents so that their crea­ti­vi­ty isn’t sti­fled by tech­ni­cal consi­de­ra­tions. Once all willing stu­dents have recor­ded, we lis­ten back to the recor­dings and try to iden­ti­fy the best moments so that we can try set­ting our lyrics to the stu­dents’ melodies.

This video shows an inter­es­ting moment when one of my stu­dents latches onto a com­bi­na­tion of lyrics (“I didn’t even know”) and melo­dy and expresses that he thinks the lyrics should be repea­ted. Some of the other stu­dents object, as the repe­ti­tion wouldn’t work with the lyrics that the class had alrea­dy crea­ted. The stu­dents then have to find a reso­lu­tion (col­lec­tive song-wri­ting at its best!).

The second group fea­tu­red in the video is my Grade 9 class. Unlike the Grade 7 class, these stu­dents opted not to write lyrics until after they’d crea­ted some melo­dies. My Grade 9 stu­dents are more expe­rien­ced and com­for­table on their ins­tru­ments. The chord pro­gres­sion was writ­ten by one.

• What does suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion mean at James Lyng ?

This is a video of myself and two of my stu­dents reflec­ting on what makes a suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion in the context of a pro­gram focu­sed on popu­lar music and on student choice (Trans­crip­tion June 27, 2022):

Nathan Gage : “As a music tea­cher, one thing that we often think about in the music edu­ca­tion world, or as tea­chers in gene­ral, we think about what makes a good edu­ca­tion. Then you start thin­king about a per­son who’s well edu­ca­ted, what qua­li­ties or what have they lear­ned, what makes them well edu­ca­ted, right ? So then, as a music tea­cher, you start to think, what makes a per­son well musi­cal­ly edu­ca­ted, what kinds of things do they have to know ? And I think tra­di­tio­nal­ly, even some people still believe this, but the­re’s a kind of a set of rules set out by a bunch of like old white guys basi­cal­ly, saying, okay, you have to be able to read music, read tra­di­tio­nal nota­tion, you have to be able to play a musi­cal ins­tru­ment real­ly pro­fi­cient­ly, you have to know a bunch of Ita­lian phrases, that kind of thing.

So then, for us, we do a popu­lar music pro­gram and the whole point of the popu­lar music pro­gram is that we take the cues of the stu­dents as to what they want to do musi­cal­ly. The idea is then, for me, when I think about what makes someone well edu­ca­ted musi­cal­ly, maybe there are some things that are maybe abso­lute, but a lot of it comes from what does the student want to do ? Where do they want music to kind of fit in their life after high school ?

So, my first ques­tion for you guys is what do you guys think makes a per­son well edu­ca­ted musi­cal­ly ? What kinds of things do you think could be there ? And then my second part of the ques­tion is, where do you see music fit­ting into your life after high school ? And as a school of Music, are we doing our part to get­ting you where you want to be ? Like, musi­cal­ly, for after high school ? You see what I’m saying ? So what do you think the first part is?”

Student #1 : “For the first part, I think being able to play with others or lear­ning how to play with others is a very impor­tant skill. But I defi­ni­te­ly agree with what you’re saying in that you don’t need to know how to read music in order to be like pro­fi­cient in what you’re doing. But I do think that when we get more advan­ced, I think it defi­ni­te­ly helps at least to know how to do some of these things. Maybe not read music, but like scales, or wha­te­ver, I think that’s impor­tant in what you learn how to do.

Nathan Gage : “And so you’ve been rea­ding tab. You read tab, and I think you lear­ned to do that here. Right ? And so do you think that’s impor­tant ? When we say rea­ding music, it includes that, so say, do you think in the future you want to go on the inter­net and find a song and learn to play it ? »

“I think all those things are defi­ni­te­ly a help, but you never real­ly need to do those things if you don’t want to, because I think, real­ly, what music should be about is just being fun for you. I think imme­dia­te­ly once you have some­thing that you need to do, it’s more of a chore and not some­thing that’s fun. And that’s why if you’re not having fun doing music, you’re not real­ly doing any­thing. It touches on what I was saying before. When you start to get more advan­ced, you think you start to know what you’re doing, then yeah, those things will defi­ni­te­ly help but I don’t think it’s neces­sa­ri­ly requi­red if you just want to have fun playing music.”

Student #2 : “He basi­cal­ly just said eve­ry­thing. Eve­ry­thing that went through my mind, just came out of his mouth.” (laughs).

• On Musi­cal Crea­tion at James Lyng

In this video, our stu­dio ani­ma­tor, Jason New­co­men and I dis­cuss why song-wri­ting and music crea­tion are so impor­tant to James Lyng’s music pro­gram, as well as our hopes for music edu­ca­tion in the broa­der sense.

Nathan Gage : “I’m here with Jason New­co­men, who is our stu­dio ani­ma­tor. He works on the stu­dio side with our stu­dents who want to focus on hip hop and R&B music. I thought it’d be good to have him in on this conver­sa­tion : what drew you towards crea­tive music making in your own tea­ching prac­tice ? Maybe I’ll start.

For me, I would say that it goes hand in hand with this idea of the popu­lar music edu­ca­tion pro­gram, it goes hand in hand with a pro­gram that’s trying to ele­vate student voice. Part of the popu­lar music revo­lu­tion was that the per­for­mer could be the song­wri­ter, the per­for­mer could be the com­po­ser. It sets itself apart from clas­si­cal music where you have the com­po­ser and you have a conduc­tor and below them were the per­for­mers. It just flip­ped around, espe­cial­ly with punk rock music in the 70s, you know, the idea that you didn’t even have to play a gui­tar that well, you could just bring out a gui­tar and if the song had enough pas­sion and the right hook or wha­te­ver, this is could still be a song that was still lis­te­ned to 40 or 50 years later.

In my back­ground as a musi­cian, as a per­for­mer, song­wri­ting and expres­sing myself through music has been so impor­tant to my own musi­cal prac­tice. I wan­ted to pass that on to my students.

On the ins­tru­men­tal side, on the band side, we also do a lot of lear­ning to play our ins­tru­ments through lear­ning covers of rock and pop songs. On the stu­dio side, almost all of what you do is crea­tion. That’s all you do : song­wri­ting, beat making, all that crea­tion stuff.”

Jason New­co­men : “In the last ten years, recor­ding equip­ment and recor­ding soft­ware has been so acces­sible to eve­ry­bo­dy on the Hip Hop side to the point where the big­gest Hip Hop artists in the world are making songs in their base­ment with the same equip­ment that we’re using. It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the kids on my side to learn a skill that they can conti­nue on their own time, and be pas­sio­nate about on their own time as well. I come from an era where we had to save up to get stu­dio time, you had to pay some­bo­dy who pro­ba­bly would make some­thing dif­ferent with our music. Just to empo­wer the kids by tel­ling them that this is some­thing that they’re able to do on their own with very simple tools, and use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exer­cise their free­dom in crea­tion and their free­dom to express themselves.

Nathan Gage : “For me, I would say that’s very impor­tant. If we go back to the clas­si­cal para­digm with the com­po­ser, the conduc­tor, the per­for­mers, and how that is entren­ched so much in tra­di­tio­nal music edu­ca­tion, think what that does to stu­dents. When we focus so much on music of the domi­nant culture, we’re real­ly rein­for­cing that culture. You have to think for my stu­dents, for a student body that is very diverse, what that would do to them. It’s basi­cal­ly put­ting on a pedes­tal one culture and not their own, and how they would feel about that over time. That’s why I think it’s so impor­tant. I hope what we do and I think what we try to do at all times is to flip that para­digm so that it cen­ters the stu­dents at the top of the para­digm, where the stu­dents” voice and the stu­dents” musi­cal pre­fe­rences are what is groun­ding all of their music education.

I do know that music edu­ca­tion has done a lot of work in gene­ral and a lot of tea­chers are wor­king hard to incor­po­rate music from dif­ferent cultures, but I still think that the struc­ture inherent in that clas­si­cal music para­digm is still very, very active in music edu­ca­tion and it’s very dif­fi­cult to get away from that.

For me, that’s why it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to do these crea­tion pro­jects because just natu­ral­ly when the student is doing the crea­tion and maybe wor­king through their own expe­riences or trying to express their own expe­riences through song, it natu­ral­ly cen­ters them so that their own expe­riences are what are validated.”

Bio :

Nathan Gage (he/him) is a music edu­ca­tor living and wor­king in Mon­treal, Que­bec. Having come to the pro­fes­sion later in life, he has a wealth of expe­rience in the music indus­try, as a per­for­mer and as a com­po­ser from which he can draw. He holds a bache­lor’s degree in music com­po­si­tion and has many years of expe­rience as a pro­fes­sio­nal jazz per­for­mer, playing upright and elec­tric bass. He has tou­red exten­si­ve­ly throu­ghout North Ame­ri­ca and Europe with indie rock bands Shapes & Sizes (Asth­ma­tic Kit­ty Records) and Elfin Saddle (Constel­la­tion Records). He foun­ded, mana­ged and owned Pho­no­po­lis, an inde­pendent record store, which the Mon­treal Gazette refer­red to as “an ins­ti­tu­tion in the Mon­treal music scene.” He sold the store at the start of his tea­ching career. Nathan is pas­sio­nate about popu­lar music edu­ca­tion and student-cen­te­red music edu­ca­tion and he strives to conti­nue his own edu­ca­tion as a music teacher.

For more infor­ma­tion, contact Nathan at ngage(at)emsb.qc.ca.

What does col­la­bo­ra­tive music-making mean to you ?

“I qui­ck­ly rea­li­zed that that was the point, in a way it was just to bring people toge­ther. I would arrive as myself where I was at as an empa­the­tic human being and all of the mem­bers would meet me there with their indi­vi­dual life expe­riences and how they were fee­ling on the day. And we would engage with each other and the art that we would bring to the space. » (Artist, The Bitove Method)

Pur­pose : To use col­la­bo­ra­tive song-wri­ting to unders­tand what music means to people living with demen­tia, build and nur­ture com­pas­sio­nate rela­tion­ships with people living with demen­tia, artists, volun­teers, stu­dents and others, and chal­lenge stig­ma­ti­zing approaches used with people living with dementia.

The Pro­ject and Approach : Most approaches to music with people living with demen­tia are groun­ded in the bio-medi­cal model or per­son-cen­te­red care. The bio­me­di­cal model focuses on disease, symp­tom mana­ge­ment, and func­tio­nal out­comes, whe­reas per­son-cen­te­red care focuses on the indi­vi­dual and uni-direc­tio­nal inter­ac­tions. Both of these approaches fail to cap­ture the cen­tra­li­ty of rela­tion­ships to growth, qua­li­ty of life and well-being. Our approach is groun­ded in rela­tio­nal caring, where we inten­tio­nal­ly attend to rela­tio­nal pro­cesses and use music for life enrich­ment, as a means to sup­port rela­tio­nal capa­ci­ties for connec­tion, and to fos­ter com­pas­sio­nate and reci­pro­cal rela­tion­ships among diverse people. See the Trans­la­ting Rela­tio­nal Caring into Rela­tio­nal Arts han­dout and short video clip cal­led « Music and Rela­tio­nal Caring » for more information.

Music Takes You Higher ori­gi­na­ted as a musi­cal co-crea­tion bet­ween song­wri­ter and Gram­my award win­ner, Simon Law, and mem­bers of the Dot­sa Bitove Well­ness Aca­de­my (DBWA), now known as The Bitove Method. You can learn about Simon Law, the faci­li­ta­tor of our col­la­bo­ra­tive music-making pro­cess, in the short video clip « Meet Simon ». You can also meet some of the mem­bers living with with demen­tia that were invol­ved in our pro­cess by wat­ching the video clips « Meet Allan », « Meet Robert », and « Meet Sheru ». 

The DBWA is an arts-based aca­de­my for people living with demen­tia where the arts are valued not as the­ra­py or cli­ni­cal inter­ven­tion but as a medium for rela­tio­nal caring and life enrich­ment. The song was part of a lar­ger pro­ject conduc­ted by Chris­tine Jonas-Simp­son, Sher­ry Dupuis, Pia Kon­tos and Gail Mit­chell and fun­ded by the Alzheimer’s Socie­ty of Cana­da Research Pro­gram, to explore expe­riences of musi­cal enga­ge­ment and the mea­ning of music in the lives of aca­de­my mem­bers. The pro­ject culmi­na­ted in the crea­tion of a docu­men­ta­ry film to cap­ture those mea­nings and expe­riences and chal­lenge the stig­ma asso­cia­ted with demen­tia. You can view the trai­ler or the full docu­men­ta­ry film by cli­cking on the video links below.

Our Pro­cess :

Step 1 : Start with a rela­tio­nal acti­vi­ty that helps the mem­bers in your groups connect with one ano­ther. It could be as simple as playing recor­ded music or live col­la­bo­ra­tive music and then having a conver­sa­tion about the music and what it means to them. Alter­na­ti­ve­ly invite people to be invol­ved in a sha­ring circle of curio­si­ty where mem­bers contri­bute thoughts on how they are fee­ling and sup­port each other in those fee­lings. Wha­te­ver acti­vi­ty you choose, use it as way to tran­si­tion bet­ween what people were doing before arri­ving and their invol­ve­ment in your col­la­bo­ra­tive song-wri­ting session/class/engagement.

Step 2 : Begin the lyric wri­ting enga­ge­ment using a brains­tor­ming ses­sion. You can explore any topic of inter­est to your group ; ours was what music means and we asked ques­tions, such as :

• « What does music mean to you ? »
• « What is it like to have music in your lives ? »
• « How does music relate to you ? »

Before you begin, explain what you are doing and why. Record all the res­ponses on a flip chart. To embo­dy the rela­tio­nal caring prin­ciples, you will want to be sure to include all mem­bers of your group in this crea­tive pro­cess. To help mem­bers think about what music means, engage them acti­ve­ly in music-making through sin­ging, drum­ming, dan­cing, playing uku­lele etc., and then ask what that expe­rience felt like to draw out more ideas of what music means to them. You can use wha­te­ver crea­tive pro­cess fits your group and faci­li­tates  free­dom to par­ti­ci­pate and express ideas in diverse ways.

Here are some examples of our mem­bers” ans­wers to the ques­tions that were asked :

• « Music to me is like when you eat a nice piece of cake […]; it just comes to me and I just love it. »
• « To me, music is the grea­test equa­li­zer because music ligh­tens the room. »
• « Music is my whole world. »
• « [Music] makes you hap­py and takes the sad part away. »
• « Music is soul connection. »
• « Music is a mes­sage sent to the brain to enjoy happiness »

Step 3 : Col­la­bo­rate in the wri­ting of the lyrics. The res­ponses to the ques­tions (Step 2) and the brains­tor­ming session(s) become the basis for the col­la­bo­ra­tive wri­ting of song lyrics. Review the words, phrases and images recor­ded on the flip chart sheets, and invite mem­bers to look for com­mon themes, words, and ideas, or quotes. Ask what ideas go toge­ther ; you may find one lea­ding idea emerges. For us it was “music takes you higher”. This ideas stage, where you are explo­ring dif­ferent words and lyrics is a key stage. This is your mem­bers’ own expres­sion of an idea, which should always be cen­tral. Work col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve­ly with your group to deve­lop phrases based on com­mon themes ; you can choose to rhyme or not. Your role is to open up paths to crea­tive expres­sion for people living with demen­tia and find ways to make their contri­bu­tions work together.

Step 4 : Create the music, which you can do by star­ting with either the melo­dic line and then adding har­mo­ny, or with a series of chords. Depen­ding on your fami­lia­ri­ty with wri­ting music you can choose for the melo­dy to reflect the lyrics, or not. Start by asking the group ‘What emo­tions do you feel from our lyrics?’ ‘What emo­tions do you want our song to cap­ture?’ Ans­wers to these and simi­lar ques­tions help esta­blish the tone and style for the music. This step can be under­ta­ken col­lec­ti­ve­ly with a faci­li­ta­tor or wor­king with a musi­cian who creates the melo­dy and then uses the col­la­bo­ra­tive pro­cess for feed­back and deve­lop­ment. Whi­che­ver crea­tive route you take for the music, you will want to ask your entire group what they think of the melo­dy line and be open to their sug­ges­tions and ideas for how it might go dif­fe­rent­ly, lea­ving open the pos­si­bi­li­ty of change and reas­sess­ment so that the music is owned by eve­ryone. Active, care­ful lis­te­ning, and repea­ting words your group is using will help you to embo­dy rela­tio­nal caring.

Step 5 : Com­bine the music and lyrics, share, prac­tice and “per­form” with your group. Using the musi­cal and rela­tio­nal talents within your group will sup­port buil­ding connec­tions and being open to mutual influences and lear­ning. Invite your par­ti­ci­pants to share if they play an ins­tru­ment (or have done so in the past) and look for ways to include that contri­bu­tion. Include them in deve­lo­ping rhyth­mi­cal riffs for the song, for example. Your com­mu­ni­ty will sing their words from the heart. If you choose to record your song, the rela­tio­nal caring phi­lo­so­phy will guide you to include all mem­bers of the group, by embra­cing their abi­li­ties, sup­por­ting the crea­ti­vi­ty of your group, and remem­be­ring not to wor­ry about any per­cei­ved inac­cu­ra­cies. Simon des­cribes more about our pro­cess in the video clips « Trans­for­ma­tio­nal Power of Music Making » and « Col­la­bo­ra­tive Crea­tive Pro­cess ». Consi­der tea­ching your group Music Takes you Higher using the Karaoke Sing-Along ver­sion avai­lable below.

Tips and stra­te­gies for sup­por­ting rela­tio­nal music-making can be found in the Trans­la­ting Rela­tio­nal Caring into Rela­tio­nal Arts handout.

 “There’s a human connec­tion, des­pite what some people like to think… Des­pite age or disa­bi­li­ty, there’s a human­ness among­st all of us if you look for it. And that’s what we’re trying to do with this song.” – Wal­ly Cox (Rei­ma­gi­ning Demen­tia coa­li­tion member)

The Coa­li­tion : Rei­ma­gi­ning Demen­tia : A Crea­tive Coa­li­tion for Jus­tice is an inter­na­tio­nal group of demen­tia acti­vists and allies, inclu­ding people living with demen­tia, fami­ly mem­bers, pro­fes­sio­nals, artists, resear­chers, poli­cy makers and others – all of whom share a vision of life, care and sup­port that pro­motes inclu­sion, rela­tio­na­li­ty, crea­ti­vi­ty, joy and the pos­si­bi­li­ty of growth for eve­ryone living with demen­tia.  

The Pro­ject : Let’s Rei­ma­gine is a co-crea­ted song and video pro­ject that aims to chal­lenge stig­ma, and show how people living with demen­tia can engage, connect and live a vibrant crea­tive life in com­mu­ni­ty with others. The song and video deve­lop­ment pro­cess was faci­li­ta­ted enti­re­ly online by two-time Gram­my award win­ning musi­cian Simon Law, who also pro­du­ced the song in col­la­bo­ra­tion with over 700 musi­cians, song-wri­ters, people living with demen­tia, fami­ly care part­ners, and other mem­bers of the coa­li­tion from dif­ferent parts of the world.  

Gui­ding Prin­ciples :  

Let’s Rei­ma­gine was groun­ded in two key par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry approaches : 

1. Libe­ra­to­ry Arts : Libe­ra­to­ry arts uses the arts for social jus­tice pur­poses to chal­lenge assump­tions, expose harm­ful prac­tices and social rela­tions, and ima­gine and effect new pos­si­bi­li­ties for addres­sing inequi­ties and enhan­cing qua­li­ty of life. Libe­ra­to­ry arts are par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry, inclu­sive of diverse (and all) voices, crea­tive, dia­lo­gi­cal, trans­for­ma­tive, conscious­ness-rai­sing, de-cen­tring, com­mu­ni­ca­tive, and eva­lua­tive.   

2. Authen­tic Part­ner­ships : Authen­tic part­ner­ships reco­gnizes the capa­ci­ties of people living with demen­tia and seeks to work in part­ner­ship with diverse sta­ke­hol­ders, inclu­ding people living with demen­tia, to chal­lenge stig­ma and pro­mote inclu­sion and social jus­tice for all people with demen­tia. Co-crea­ted with people living with demen­tia, the approach arti­cu­lates what is essen­tial to sup­port and sus­tain authen­tic col­la­bo­ra­tive deci­sion-making that is inclu­sive of people living with demen­tia (see the Authen­tic Part­ner­ship han­dout for more infor­ma­tion).

Co-Crea­ting Let’s Rei­ma­gine : To make this pro­ject tru­ly inclu­sive of diverse pers­pec­tives, and to cen­ter the voices of people living with demen­tia, the song-wri­ting and pro­duc­tion pro­cess inclu­ded the fol­lo­wing : 

• A series of online arts-based and play­ful acti­vi­ties with coa­li­tion mem­bers aimed at iden­ti­fying key mes­sages to be reflec­ted in the song. Dra­wing on the diverse talents of coa­li­tion mem­bers, we wor­ked in small groups, using brea­kout rooms to dis­cuss and crea­ti­ve­ly represent how they “re-ima­gine demen­tia” by asking : “what do you want the world to know about demen­tia?” “What does re-ima­gi­ning demen­tia mean or look like for you?”
  • For ins­tance, group mem­bers repre­sen­ted their dis­cus­sions through poems, spo­ken word, art, and songs. You can try this acti­vi­ty with any group by asking them « What do you want the world to know about .…? », « What do you need to live well ? » etc. Then ask them to come up with images and words that reflect their ans­wers to the ques­tions. These images can be pul­led toge­ther into a col­la­bo­ra­tive col­lage or you could work with the group to create a poem out of the words they come up with. The col­lage and/or poem can then be the star­ting point for a song.

• Recor­ding inter­views with coa­li­tion mem­bers living with demen­tia to explore their expe­riences of stig­ma which were direct­ly inclu­ded in the song.
• Col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve­ly ana­ly­zing dis­cus­sions and out­puts pro­du­ced during those activities/interviews which were used to ins­pi­red the lyric crea­tion and the deve­lop­ment of musi­cal riffs for the song. 
• Wor­king with people living with demen­tia and other mem­bers of the coa­li­tion to audio-record dif­ferent parts of the song, prio­ri­ti­zing the voices of people living with demen­tia as soloists for the verses of the song. 
• Invi­ting coa­li­tion mem­bers, orga­ni­za­tions, and broa­der com­mu­ni­ty part­ners from around the world to share pho­tos, video clips, and art repre­sen­ting what it means to live well with demen­tia that were then used for a music video to accom­pa­ny the song. 

Sup­ports : The Coa­li­tion uti­li­zed the fol­lo­wing stra­te­gies to sup­port the col­la­bo­ra­tive song-wri­ting pro­cess :  

• For­ming a smal­ler song-wri­ting com­mit­tee (approxi­ma­te­ly 7 people) res­pon­sible for conso­li­da­ting the ideas for­med at the lar­ger mem­ber gathe­rings, and dra­wing on these to create ini­tial song lyrics. In an ite­ra­tive pro­cess, ideas were sha­red with the lar­ger group for feed­back and used to help to deve­lop the lyrics, and this pro­cess conti­nued until eve­ryone was hap­py with the lyrics.
• Dra­wing on the diverse talents of mem­bers to crea­ti­ve­ly explore mes­sages impor­tant to share in the song.  
• Dra­wing on Coa­li­tion mem­ber net­works to bring in more pers­pec­tives, inputs and voices (i.e., rea­ching out to com­mu­ni­ty choirs and musi­cians from dif­ferent coun­tries to sing and play parts of the song ; invi­ting mem­bers to share pho­tos and videos of them­selves, friends and/or fami­ly mem­bers living well with demen­tia ; part­ne­ring with the­ra­peu­tic recrea­tio­nists, life enrich­ment staff, and music the­ra­pists in day pro­grams, resi­den­tial aged care set­tings, and other pro­grams to sup­port people living with demen­tia in lear­ning and sin­ging parts of the song, dan­cing to the song, and/or crea­ting art­work or pla­cards that chal­lenge the stig­ma asso­cia­ted with demen­tia and show­case the crea­ti­vi­ty of people living with demen­tia). To see examples please refer to the gal­le­ry.  
• Sup­por­ting mem­bers to learn about and navi­gate Zoom, and use tech­no­lo­gy to record parts of the song (i.e., hos­ting lear­ning ses­sions on Zoom to prac­tice the song and how to record it on dif­ferent devices ; crea­ting and emai­ling a han­dout to mem­bers with ins­truc­tions on how to record vocals ; having 1:1 Zoom mee­tings with mem­bers who nee­ded extra sup­port in the recor­ding pro­cess).  

Consi­de­ra­tions : Remem­be­ring the pur­pose and goal of this pro­ject while col­la­bo­ra­ting with over 700 people was chal­len­ging at times. For example, we found that having input from so many people gene­ra­ted many more ideas than could be reflec­ted in the song, which made it dif­fi­cult to ensure that all voices were inclu­ded. We found it was impor­tant to remind our­selves of our authen­tic part­ner­ship phi­lo­so­phy and to engage in cri­ti­cal reflec­tion about our prio­ri­ties and objec­tives. With this reflec­tion we re-affir­med the impor­tance of cen­tring the voices of people living with demen­tia in both the crea­tion and recor­ding of the song, which was pivo­tal to our deci­sion to extend the pro­ject time­line to ensure that people living with demen­tia were fea­tu­red as soloists in the song. You can hear about what it was like to be invol­ved in this pro­cess for one of our soloists living with demen­tia by wat­ching the short video clip « Ins­pi­ring Hope Through Col­la­bo­ra­tive Enga­ge­ment ». Other mem­bers of our team share their expe­riences in the full « Launch Par­ty » video. You can hear the song Let’s Rei­ma­gine and watch the video by cli­cking on the link to « Let’s Rei­ma­gine » below. 

Broa­de­ning Enga­ge­ment : To ins­pire broa­der glo­bal social enga­ge­ment, we inclu­ded resources on our web­site (i.e., song lyrics and audio files) for anyone who wan­ted to create their own ver­sions of the song and/or video. For example, Rei­ma­ging Demen­tia Malay­sia crea­ted their own lyrics and music video from the audio tracks pro­vi­ded on our web­site. We invite others to create their own or new ver­sions of the song and share those with us. Please refer to the lyric sheet and audio tracks pro­vi­ded on this page.  

Quotes From The Project :

• « Eve­ryone can thrive if we believe it and are bold enough to try it »
• « I use music to chase away the brain fog on those days where I can’t real­ly think straight. […] I do a lot of rei­ma­gi­ning, espe­cial­ly on rough days, and it was great and a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to do this. »
• « What’s impor­tant is to […] go for­ward and be loved and love, and I think that this kind of thing shows that. »
• « I hope that it brings about free­dom, and edu­ca­tion for those who have a ste­reo­ty­pi­cal view of what demen­tia looks like and how it can be reas­su­ring to turn it around to see how people can live hap­pi­ly […]; they can still express them­selves and they can still have fun. »
• « Music is such a power­ful thing ; it’s just one of those things that goes into your soul […] and I wish more people would do this – dis­co­ver things that they can enjoy, but that also brings them peace and calm. »

Through an inclu­sive and expe­rien­tial lens, this pro­ject intro­duces Free­style rap, par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music, and impro­vi­sed musi­cking through group skill buil­ding acti­vi­ties for digi­tal artists, crea­tives, and the curious. Our par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry pro­ject brings toge­ther holis­tic approaches to art the­ra­py, social construc­ti­vism, and non ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion using improvisational/ free­style crea­ti­vi­ty. Skill­sets cru­cial to all genres and mediums of contem­po­ra­ry art, with a spe­ci­fic value to arts edu­ca­tors, per­for­mers, dan­cers, musi­cians, sin­gers, poets, rap­pers, visual artists and all crea­tives. Reco­gni­zing the many artists, employees and arts orga­ni­za­tions, and their loved ones whose health and live­li­hoods have been dis­pro­por­tio­na­te­ly affec­ted by the glo­bal spread of COVID-19, this pro­ject can be faci­li­ta­ted ‘live’ in per­son, as a hybrid, ‘tea­cher live / young artists at home” or asyn­chro­nous­ly – at artists own time via free, step by step work­shop down­load. “At Home with Ira Lee” is desi­gned to resource BIPOC/Si2+LGBTQ crea­tives facing bar­riers such as ; limi­ted access to mea­ning­ful edu­ca­tio­nal expe­riences and oppor­tu­ni­ties and rural/ remote artists with limi­ted broad­band access. 

*Please contact Ira Lee at lazers.are.sharpl@gmail.com if you’d like to know more about the project.*

Work­shop Breakdown

Dura­tion : 1 hour 

Lan­guages : EN/FR

Sug­ges­ted ages –  5 to 12 years of age, 13 to 18 years of age, Adults, Seniors, Intergenerational

Peda­go­gy – Equi­ty Cen­tred Content/ appro­priate for SI2+LGBTQ and excep­tio­nal learners.

Work­shop Contents

SAM AND IRA WORKSHOP LINKS and PD DL (FREE)  for a more fluid, dyna­mic and mea­ning­ful crea­tive lear­ning experience. 

(Refe­rence Slide 1/pdf.) 

Intro­duc­tion :  Who the fudge is ? (Insert instructor/ artist/ educator’s name, bio, his­to­ry and high­lights  here)

(Refe­rence Slide 2/pdf.)  

What is Musi­cking ? (10 – min sug­ges­ted, solo or in groups ) 

2.b Acti­vi­ty Description

Goal : Group dis­cus­sion. What do you think par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music, ‘free­style’, and impro­vi­sa­tio­nal crea­ti­vi­ty means, why learn, and where to start ? Buil­ding on social construc­ti­vism dis­cus­sion points, ask group for examples, opi­nions, and guesses. Then pro­vide gene­ric defi­ni­tions, inclu­sive goals, and crea­tive applications. 

 (Refe­rence Slide 3/pdf.) 

A beginner’s guide : Top 3 most impor­tant tips to suc­cess­ful improvisation 

3.b Goal :  Review and dis­cuss.  (5 minutes, group discussion)

4.b Goal, Review sample  (3:00 minutes)

‘Do your­self, the crea­tors truth’s’ – Sam and Ira Lee’s (‘Do your­self’ free­style sto­ry­tel­ling vs ins­tru­men­tal impro­vi­sa­tion) FREE DL/ ‘LINK HERE’ 

(Refe­rence  Slide 4 in pdf)

4.b Acti­vi­ty :  Learn to Let go  (20 mins total sug­ges­ted time, solo or in groups, no ‘isms’ ie : sexism, racism, toke­nism, ableism, etc. ) 

Acti­vi­ty Description/ Goal 

• For three minutes, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vi­sed – for 3 minutes straight, out loud. If you make a mis­take, keep going, for 3 whole minutes. Try your best, and prac­tice having fun, making hila­rious mis­takes, and expe­ri­men­ting with ideas, the tone, rhythm and ener­gy of your voice, and try to impro­vise a sto­ry / concept that is com­ple­te­ly spon­ta­neous ! (solo, no rhythm, beat)

• Now - For three minutes, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vise in groups of two or more – for 3 minutes straight, out loud. If you make a mis­take, keep going, for 3 whole minutes. Try your best, and prac­tice having fun, making hila­rious mis­takes, and expe­ri­men­ting with ideas, the tone, rhythm and ener­gy of your voice, and try to impro­vise a sto­ry / concept that is com­ple­te­ly spon­ta­neous ! (no rhythm, or beat) 

ADVANCED

For 3 minutes, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vise in groups of two or more – for 3 minutes straight, out loud, to a rhythm or beat, or musi­cian, or even a beat­box !  If you make a mis­take, keep going, for 3 whole minutes. Try your best, and prac­tice having fun, making hila­rious mis­takes, and expe­ri­men­ting with ideas, the tone, rhythm and ener­gy of your voice, and try to impro­vise a sto­ry / concept that is com­ple­te­ly spontaneous ! 

        c) Goal :  Review and dis­cuss favou­rite moments, fun­niest moments, best mis­takes, pain points and ove­rall fee­lings about the last two minutes of impro­vi­sing in small . large groups.

 ( Refe­rence Slide 5.pdf.)   

       5.  I wish my favou­rite popu­lar artists weren’t racist, sexist, homophobes.

 Acti­vi­ty sample/ review/ video – Sam and Ira Lee’s (‘Digi­tal Lite­ra­cy vs. Com­pu­ter Science) FREE DL/ mp4/wav ‘LINK HERE’ 

 5.b Acti­vi­ty Des­crip­tion : Group dis­cus­sion. Res­pon­si­bi­li­ty, accoun­ta­bi­li­ty and per­so­nal power in art. Dis­cus­sion points, ‘appro­pria­tion, racism, sexism and dis­cri­mi­na­tion, and how taste/ style/ ori­gi­na­li­ty, and hones­ty serve to grow artists beyond ste­reo­types, and remove bar­riers for all to create. 

Thought star­ters – 

• Ask the group for examples of favou­rite dan­cers, sin­gers, wri­ters, poets and artists.

• Ask  the group to name their favou­rite under­ground Cana­dian artists.

• Ask the group for their favou­rite local/ artists in the city.

• Dis­cuss–  if and how digi­tal lite­ra­cy and STEM can play trans­for­ma­tive roles in both skills deve­lop­ment, access to edu­ca­tion and pro­fes­sio­nal deve­lop­ment tools, bran­ding and reach skill sets, and how to create more oppor­tu­ni­ties to use your art to make a sus­tai­nable dif­fe­rence in your com­mu­ni­ty – digi­tal­ly and in person. 

    5c.  The Fugue State vs. The Flow State  Review and dis­cuss slide (5 minutes, group discussion)

(Refe­rence Slide 6 in pdf)

6.  No BS Chal­lenge  (20 mins total sug­ges­ted time, solo or in groups, no ‘isms’ ie : sexism, racism, toke­nism, ableism, etc. ) 

 What you need – Any kind of recor­ding device ie : PC, Cell­phone, com­pu­ter mic, etc) and 

your favou­rite beat, rhythm, ins­tru­ment, or song ! (to dance, paint, or par­ti­ci­pate with)

 Acti­vi­ty Description

• For thir­ty seconds, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vise – a sto­ry. With at least one cha­rac­ter, one loca­tion, and one pro­blem – not using any dero­ga­to­ry lan­guage. Don’t be afraid to make a mil­lion, a bil­lion mis­takes. The only goal is to do your best, and not stop impro­vi­sing for 30 seconds. 

• Now - For 1 minute, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vise – a sto­ry. With at least one cha­rac­ter, one loca­tion, and one pro­blem – not using any dero­ga­to­ry lan­guage, while recor­ding it. Don’t be afraid to make a mil­lion, a bil­lion mis­takes. The only goal is to do your best, and not stop impro­vi­sing for 30 seconds. 

• Final­ly ! –  for 2 full minutes, try to rap, rhyme, sing, dance, or impro­vise – a sto­ry. With at least one cha­rac­ter, one loca­tion, and one pro­blem – not using any dero­ga­to­ry lan­guage, while recor­ding it. Don’t be afraid to make a mil­lion, a bil­lion mis­takes. The only goal is to do your best, and not stop impro­vi­sing for 30 seconds. Then, lis­ten either in small groups, or pri­va­te­ly. GOAL : Learn to get used of your voice, find your favou­rite parts, favou­rite moments, and hear your­self the way the world does. 

6.b   Non Ver­bal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in free­style rap, par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music, and impro­vi­sed musicking

Acti­vi­ty Description

 Watch Sam and Ira Lee’s (I had a pret­ty weird week) FREE DL/ mp4/wav on the CMC you­tube chan­nel ‘LINK HERE’  

• Break into groups of two and prac­tice tel­ling a sto­ry with no words. Using facial expres­sions, space, actions, move­ment and emo­tion ! Tell a sto­ry, with no words !

Dis­cus­sion point – How did this acti­vi­ty make you feel ? Was it more dif­fi­cult to par­ti­ci­pate ? Do you feel all people who com­mu­ni­cate dif­fe­rent­ly deserve a chance to com­mu­ni­cate how they choose ? What are some of the ways we can learn to lis­ten, and lis­ten to learn ?

At home with Ira Lee END 

Free­style rap, par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music,  and impro­vi­sed musi­cking –  Skill buil­ding for digi­tal artists,  crea­tives, and the curious.

Thank you for your time and for having fun lear­ning and doing with us !  For more free arts, culture and deve­lop­ment resources, please see therealplains.com. 

This pro­ject brought music to resi­dents of Colum­bia Forest Long Term Care (LTC) during the COVID-19  pan­de­mic, a time of incre­dible unpre­dic­ta­bi­li­ty, iso­la­tion, fear, and change. The pro­ject trans­for­med into using music to bring toge­ther LTC staff, resi­dents and fami­ly mem­bers in a stress­ful time where there was more focus on “dis­tance” than unity.

The Pro­ject Goals were :

• To create a sense of uni­ty and belonging
• To unite and bring toge­ther resi­dents and staff in long term care (LTC )homes
• To empo­wer resi­dents in expres­sing them­selves through musi­cal creations
• To encou­rage and empo­wer staff to use music throu­ghout their work day
• To use music as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for staff and resi­dents to engage and relate to each other
• To use adap­table music expe­riences when nee­ded to fit an ever chan­ging environment

This pro­ject hap­pe­ned orga­ni­cal­ly, but in 3 phases.

1. Phase one : Using Music to bring Resi­dents together. 

In this phase, musi­cal expe­riences were used as a forum to encou­rage social enga­ge­ment. Week­ly music groups were conduc­ted for the resi­dents by a trai­ned music the­ra­pist who was wor­king in the recrea­tion depart­ment. The music groups pro­vi­ded various inter­ven­tions such as sin­ging fami­liar songs, ins­tru­ment playing, and move­ment to music and were crea­ted to fit the needs of the resi­dents. Music groups inclu­ded a week­ly bell choir which brought toge­ther resi­dents from the same floor but dif­ferent units. Please see the video below to watch an excerpt of the bell choir (.13sec) .

2. PHASE TWO : Music expe­riences for the resi­dents and staff/family care­gi­vers in indi­vi­dual settings 

When groups were not allo­wed due to COVID infec­tion control poli­cies, music expe­riences for resi­dents were crea­ted in indi­vi­dual set­tings. Staff and fami­ly mem­bers were encou­ra­ged to engage and par­ti­ci­pate with the resi­dents when pos­sible.  Per­so­nal Sup­port Wor­kers ( PSWs)  and I col­la­bo­ra­ted to sing toge­ther for resi­dents indi­vi­dual­ly. Please see video for an example of col­la­bo­ra­ting with a PSW to bring a spe­cial musi­cal expe­rience to a resident in their room (.58). Music was also incor­po­ra­ted in fami­ly video calls with resi­dents which allo­wed resi­dents to engage in music with their loved ones even through the dis­tance.  One fami­ly mem­ber sha­red that the music in the video calls were com­for­ting and important.

« The video calls were a chal­lenge for my Mom as she was not used to them. Whe­ne­ver there was music as a part of the call, Mom would stay on the call lon­ger and it was a won­der­ful expe­rience for me at home to watch her sing. »

3. PHASE 3 : Music beco­ming part of the LTC home environment

In this phase, music orga­ni­cal­ly became part of the LTC envi­ron­ment. Staff musi­cal  pre­fe­rences and dif­ferent ins­tru­men­tal music was played during resident meal times ( break­fast and lunch) on iPads and Won­der­boom spea­kers.  This not only allo­wed for a more plea­sure expe­rience the resi­dents, but also allo­wed the staff to enjoy some of their favou­rite music at work. It allo­wed for staff to bond over some of their favou­rite songs as well and increa­sed the enjoy­ment of the work­day. Music in the LTC became more com­mu­ni­ty focu­sed and all those invol­ved in the home were wel­come to engage in musi­cal acti­vi­ties with resi­dents : hou­se­kee­pers, nurses, fami­ly care­gi­vers and pri­vate for­mal care­gi­vers. Music became part of events in the home such as staff bon­ding acti­vi­ties  and  cele­bra­tions. This was high­ligh­ted when resi­dents and staff col­la­bo­ra­ted in choo­sing music to sing for a nurse reti­re­ment par­ty ( see video expert at 2.52).

Requi­red sup­plies needed :

• Hand­bell set
• Various per­cus­sion instruments
• key­board
• gui­tar
• A device to play recor­ded Music ( iPad and Won­der­boom spea­kers were used)

This acti­vi­ty intro­duces par­ti­ci­pants to crea­ting music by paying close atten­tion to the qua­li­ty of ano­ther person’s movement.

 The acti­vi­ty deve­lops the abi­li­ty to lis­ten and notice one’s res­ponses to the sur­roun­ding world. In fact, one’s mind, one’s ima­gi­na­tion, one’s senses, always respond to exter­nal sti­mu­li. Silent Rhythms is an example of a viable way of giving voice to such per­so­nal and unique responses.

 Silent Rhythms is an extre­me­ly ver­sa­tile acti­vi­ty. I sha­red it with very young chil­dren (5–6 years old) and elders ; with tee­na­gers and adults ; with people in situa­tions of men­tal vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ty and for­mer pri­son inmates. 

 The clips for­ming the video tuto­rial are taken from a work­shop for dan­cers. That work­shop aimed spe­ci­fi­cal­ly to pro­vide that com­mu­ni­ty with tools to bridge dance and music crea­tion. Although eve­ry dan­cer had an inti­mate connec­tion to music through move­ment, often they were obli­vious as to how to trans­late the move­ments of their body into an embo­died kind of sound pro­duc­tion. The fol­lo­wing pro­cess hel­ped them do just that :

Steps 

1. “Lis­te­ning with the eyes”

Par­ti­ci­pants orga­ni­sed in a circle, each per­son stan­ding a couple of metres from the people next to them. Par­ti­ci­pants are invi­ted to “lis­ten with their eyes » to what is about to hap­pen. The whole acti­vi­ty takes place in silence. Each indi­vi­dual, in turn, steps a lit­tle for­ward clo­ser to the centre and per­forms a repe­ti­tive move­ment with their body. The per­son per­forms the move­ment a few times and then stops and walks back to her or his place. At that point, the next per­son steps in and per­forms a new move­ment, and so on until eve­ry­bo­dy per­forms a silent body pattern.

At the end of the circle, the faci­li­ta­tor would ask the par­ti­ci­pants if, by « lis­te­ning with their eyes” (mea­ning : by paying close atten­tion to the qua­li­ty of the mover’ move­ments) they heard any­thing in their ima­gi­na­tion. Usual­ly people express that indeed they heard something. 

2. Voi­cing

At that point the faci­li­ta­tor per­forms a repe­ti­tive move­ment and invites a volun­teer to give voice to what she or he “hears” with their eyes. In turn, the faci­li­ta­tor asks dif­ferent people to give voice to the same movement. 

After this demons­tra­tion, the group goes back in a circle and repeats the exer­cise from the begin­ning. Yet, this time, the per­son oppo­site in the circle to the per­son moving, voices what she or he hears by “lis­te­ning with their eyes”. The sequence usual­ly pro­ceeds fol­lo­wing this order : a per­son steps in the circle, starts per­for­ming a repe­ti­tive move­ment (the mover). After a lit­tle, the per­son in the circle oppo­site to the mover will start sin­ging what she or he hears (the sin­ger). When the mover stops, also the sin­ger stops, and the acti­vi­ty moves on to the next couple mover/singer. 

3. Debrie­fing 

The expe­rience is fol­lo­wed by a debrie­fing to allow par­ti­ci­pants to express the emo­tions, thoughts and consi­de­ra­tions pro­du­ced by the experience. 

These are some of the obser­va­tions offe­red by par­ti­ci­pants in the past :

• Each per­son “hears” the move­ment differently

• Inter­pre­ta­tions can dif­fer great­ly and yet it is evident a clear rela­tion­ship bet­ween the move­ment and the sound was created 

• Each inter­pre­ta­tion feels unique and legitimate

• The sin­ging appears to be the pro­duct of a part­ner­ship bet­ween mover and singer

People at times point out the effort­less­ness of the pro­cess. Others obser­ved that a person’s voice can empha­sise and make appa­rent details of a move­ment that would have pas­sed other­wise unno­ti­ced to them.

I per­so­nal­ly obser­ved also that more expres­sive move­ments usual­ly offe­red more ins­pi­ra­tion for the sin­gers, as if a move­ment full of inten­tion com­mu­ni­cates more information. 

Fur­ther Developments 

Silent Rhythms offers dif­ferent lines of deve­lop­ment. While I encou­rage each faci­li­ta­tor to fol­low their intui­tion and fur­ther deve­lop this acti­vi­ty in their own ways, here are two pos­si­bi­li­ties that I often use.

• Mul­tiple people voice one person’s move­ment. The acti­vi­ty pro­ceeds exact­ly as des­cri­bed above in the “Voi­cing” sec­tion. Yet, after the first per­son begins to voice the moment, the per­son in the circle stan­ding next to him or her will add her or his voice too. I invite the second sin­ger either to express parts of the move­ment that the first sin­ger left out, or maybe by cap­tu­ring with the voice a dif­ferent qua­li­ty or aspect of the move­ment. There is also the option of adding a second voice that does not refer any­more to the move­ment but that sim­ply responds to the first voice. Up to four voices can be added per mover. 

• Move­ment-to-Voice-to-Move­ment. In this varia­tion, the sound pro­du­ced by the sin­ger is the ins­pi­ra­tion for a new move­ment per­for­med by a second mover. In this varia­tion the par­ti­ci­pants are dis­pla­ced in a line : the first mover faces the sin­ger, while the second mover is shoul­der to shoul­der with the sin­ger (in order to not see the move­ment of the first mover). The sequence can be video recor­ded and the three par­ti­ci­pants can watch it after­ward and com­pare the conti­nui­ty and diver­gences in the inter­pre­ta­tions of move­ment and voice. 

Dee­per Implications 

In peo­ple’s appre­cia­tion of this acti­vi­ty I dis­co­ve­red some­thing beyond its inten­ded pur­pose. Most times a sense of relief and a soft sense of exci­ta­tion per­vade the space.The com­mon sen­ti­ment is well expres­sed by par­ti­ci­pant Nadia Ste­vens : “It is nice to see and reco­gnize my move­ment in a person’s voice.” 

A simi­lar fee­ling was expres­sed by for­mer inmates at a work­shop for the asso­cia­tion Com­mu­ni­tas, which sup­ports for­mer pri­so­ners” rein­te­gra­tion in socie­ty. The orga­ni­ser of the gathe­ring Jeri expres­sed that Silent Rhythms pro­du­ced a soo­thing effect of mutual recog­ni­tion bet­ween par­ti­ci­pants, which was pre­cious for this spe­ci­fic com­mu­ni­ty of people at risk of social isolation. 

Han­nah Arendt says that we can­not know who a per­son is by gau­ging what a per­son does. Who a per­son is can ins­tead be dis­co­ve­red only by atten­ding the person’s spe­ci­fic way of moving or acting, spea­king or inter­ac­ting. Yet human beings are also confron­ted by the conun­drum that no one can see him­self or her­self from the out­side. We can only see our­selves reflec­ted in the beha­viour of the people who inter­act with us. I believe that this acti­vi­ty makes evident the webs of reci­pro­ci­ty that entangles the people in a group. Silent Rhythms invites people to inten­tio­nal­ly and play­ful­ly look at others” ways of moving, paying atten­tion to details, and the­re­fore opens the pos­si­bi­li­ty for a sense of recog­ni­tion and encounter.

Introduction

Within the context of the Piece of Mind pro­ject (details at the bot­tom of the page), we des­cribe a col­la­bo­ra­tive acti­vi­ty in which we trans­la­ted a poem about the lived expe­rience of Par­kin­son’s disease (PD) to music and then put it onto the stage. In col­la­bo­ra­tion with the author Lili Saint Laurent, musi­cian Caro­line Bar­bier de Reulle ini­tial­ly com­po­sed a song based on the ori­gi­nal text, and by dra­wing ins­pi­ra­tion from exchanges with other Piece of Mind par­ti­ci­pants. The crea­tive pro­cess then went through seve­ral ite­ra­tions, inclu­ding incor­po­ra­ting the many voices of our pro­ject, and beco­ming the star­ting point for the final scene of Piece of Mind : Parkinson’s.

Below we break down our pro­cess of co-crea­tion, with the hope that it can be adap­ted to other texts and contexts.

Activity Breakdown

Goal : to depict a lived expe­rience (in our case, Par­kin­son’s disease) using dif­ferent forms of artis­tic expres­sion. We aimed to add new dimen­sions to the ini­tial text by mixing dif­ferent artis­tic styles and points of view, while remai­ning true to its ori­gi­nal meaning.

Where : On a vir­tual plat­form such as Zoom, through direct mes­sa­ging, and/or in person.

Dura­tion : Plan for a mini­mum of seve­ral ~1–2 hour ses­sions, spread over mul­tiple weeks or months. This type of col­la­bo­ra­tive pro­cess requires time to build rela­tion­ships and lis­ten to all participants.

Par­ti­ci­pants / Tar­get Audience : In our case, this acti­vi­ty was car­ried out in a col­lec­tive inclu­ding people with lived expe­rience of PD, care­gi­vers, neu­ros­cien­tists, dan­cers, cir­cus artists and musi­cians. This acti­vi­ty could be adap­ted to other groups.

Group size : We sug­gest that the pri­ma­ry col­la­bo­ra­tion be bet­ween 2 to 4 people (small group), in order to ensure that mea­ning­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be esta­bli­shed and that the exchanges will be fruitful.

Ins­truc­tions :

1. Choose a work (a poem or other text) that fits your final objec­tive and repre­sents the spi­rit of the pro­ject, while consi­de­ring the musi­cal pos­si­bi­li­ties. In our case, the poem « Sur le fil » by Lili Saint Laurent, a woman living with PD, became a com­mon thread for our group as it crea­ted a natu­ral link bet­ween the lived expe­rience of PD and the cir­cus arts through which we wan­ted to depict it.
2. Take the time to lis­ten to and unders­tand the piece. Ask your­selves what it means, what key fee­lings or mes­sages are conveyed in the work, and which musi­cal ele­ments might best cor­res­pond to the desi­red fee­ling. Based on this reflec­tion, the musi­cian can com­pose and pro­pose an ini­tial musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of the text.
3. Fol­lo­wing this ini­tial pro­po­sal, plan an exchange bet­ween the musi­cian and the author of the text so that the lat­ter can express his or her reac­tion to it. This will allow the author to have an idea of the musi­cal style pro­po­sed, and to ver­ba­lize what works and what does not. Be open to expe­ri­men­ting with pos­sible ave­nues, and going through seve­ral drafts and ite­ra­tions – some­times you have to go in the wrong direc­tion at first to find a com­mon path ! As an example, have a lis­ten to the first and second ver­sion Caro­line pro­po­sed here.
4. Once you are hap­py with the com­bi­na­tion of text and music, share it with the other artists, to allow them to form their own asso­cia­tions with it. If you are wor­king in a group, find ways to incor­po­rate the other pers­pec­tives or ideas so that the work becomes a col­lec­tive effort. In our case, this meant inte­gra­ting all the par­ti­ci­pants” voices into the sound­track, and adjus­ting the musi­cal com­po­si­tion to fit the cho­reo­gra­phy for our per­for­mance.  You can check out the final ver­sion of the song here, and see the cor­res­pon­ding scene here.

To learn more about the crea­tive pro­cess of pro­du­cing this piece of music, and hear direct­ly from Lili and Caro­line, check out our lit­tle vignette (pri­ma­ri­ly in French) here.

Quotes (trans­la­ted from French):
“When I wrote the poem, it was with the idea of phy­si­cal­ly trans­cri­bing the imper­ma­nence of my life with Par­kin­son’s disease. Eve­ry move­ment, eve­ry thing that I would do took on a new impor­tance, reco­gni­zing that where I would be in the next moment was unpre­dic­table. »   – Lili Saint Laurent

“My first pro­po­si­tion to Lili was a melo­dic song – with pia­no, voice, verses and a cho­rus […] I sent it to her, and she said : “Lis­ten, your song is very love­ly, but it doesn’t cor­res­pond to what I feel and how I live in my body.”  » – Caro­line Bar­bier de Reulle

“This poem kept coming back to me, because it illus­tra­ted the theme of the pro­ject so well. So at the end of a Zoom ses­sion, I asked : “could I read some­thing to you?” For me, it was just a lit­tle offe­ring… but it tou­ched eve­ryone so dee­ply, and kept coming up in dis­cus­sions after­wards, so it ended up being a nar­ra­tive thread for the per­for­mance. » – Lili Saint Laurent

“[…] What could cor­res­pond best to what Lili explai­ned to me regar­ding how she feels ? So then I thought about the vio­lin – the idea that « the wire » can also be a string, a chord – and I wan­ted to use the vio­lin in a chao­tic and noi­sy way, to represent the mul­ti­tude of emo­tions in the poem… » – Caro­line Bar­bier de Reulle

Piece of Mind

Piece of Mind uses the per­for­ming arts to syn­the­size and trans­late know­ledge about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and demen­tia. Our par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry research-crea­tion pro­ject brings toge­ther artists (cir­cus per­for­mers, dan­cers, musi­cians, visual artists), resear­chers, indi­vi­duals living with PD or demen­tia, and care­gi­vers to co-create artis­tic works based on scien­ti­fic research and lived expe­rience. The ove­rall goals are to :

1. faci­li­tate know­ledge crea­tion and exchange bet­ween the see­min­gly dis­pa­rate com­mu­ni­ties par­ti­ci­pa­ting in the crea­tive pro­cess and
2. create per­for­mances that can engage a wide audience on both an emo­tio­nal and intel­lec­tual level, and spark mea­ning­ful conver­sa­tions around PD and dementia.

We use an emergent and ite­ra­tive pro­cess to iden­ti­fy the key themes and mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate in our per­for­mances, and to ensure that mul­tiple pers­pec­tives are incor­po­ra­ted along the way. Our research pro­cess has inclu­ded nume­rous vir­tual work­shops, faci­li­ta­ted dis­cus­sions, and movement/music ses­sions to build rela­tion­ships and explore both scien­ti­fic and lived expe­rience know­ledge through crea­ti­vi­ty and embo­di­ment. You can see other examples from our pro­ject here :

https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/projects/piece-of-mind-give-us-a-hand-participatory-art-sci-video/

https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/projects/piece-of-mind-connecting-scientific-research-and-lived-experience-through-music/

Since the start of the COVID-19 pan­de­mic, Sound & Song pro­gram par­ti­ci­pants have deve­lo­ped an online col­la­bo­ra­tive song­wri­ting prac­tice groun­ded in indi­vi­dual sound­walks. Par­ti­ci­pants use sound­wal­king to gather lyri­cal mate­rial for an ori­gi­nal song, and write the song toge­ther through week­ly online sessions.

Based at the Round­house Com­mu­ni­ty Arts & Recrea­tion Centre, Sound & Song is part of Arts & Health : Heal­thy Aging through the Arts, which brings toge­ther pro­fes­sio­nal artists with groups of seniors and Elders for col­la­bo­ra­tive art making pro­jects. Our work takes place on the unce­ded, ances­tral ter­ri­to­ries of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Mus­queam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squa­mish) and səlilwə­taɬ (Tsleil Wau­tuth) Nations.

PROCESS

1. Par­ti­ci­pants meet week­ly for 2 hour work­shops to learn sin­ging tech­nique through sin­ging popu­lar music, as well as dis­cuss and write about week­ly indi­vi­dual sound­walks. Hil­de­gard Westerkamp’s wri­ting on sound­wal­king is the star­ting point for these discussions.

2. A web-based hub is crea­ted where par­ti­ci­pants can upload images and short videos they’ve cap­tu­red with smart­phones on their sound­walks for others to see. (We use the free, online-based soft­ware, “Pad­let,” for this.)

3. These images and videos are wat­ched and dis­cus­sed toge­ther, and a com­mu­nal word docu­ment is star­ted, where the lead artist writes down par­ti­ci­pants’ expe­riences of sound­wal­king. If they have not had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go out­side, par­ti­ci­pants can also des­cribe the scene out­side their win­dow, or respond to the media that others have pos­ted. (See Brains­torm Draft in « Scores. »)

4. Par­ti­ci­pants conti­nue to take week­ly walks on their own, and a com­mon theme usual­ly emerges by the third week. After a theme is cho­sen, par­ti­ci­pants keep this theme in mind during their walks to build upon it in the col­la­bo­ra­tive wri­ting sessions.

5. Once theme has been esta­bli­shed, par­ti­ci­pants work toge­ther to build a four-line cho­rus on the theme, dis­cus­sing rhyme, rhythm, and content of the lines.

6. Once the cho­rus lyrics are com­plete, the lead artist asks the group what style and mood of music they think would com­pli­ment the lyrics, and will say or sing them back rhyth­mi­cal­ly to the group accom­pa­nied by an instrument.

7. The lead artist takes the cho­rus lyrics home and sets them to music. The cho­rus is sung for par­ti­ci­pants and edits to the lyrics or music are sug­ges­ted by the group.

8. The pro­cess of sound­wal­king, post­ing to the Pad­let, and wri­ting conti­nues until ano­ther song sec­tion has been deve­lo­ped. Dis­cus­sions and ins­truc­tion around song struc­ture occurs as par­ti­ci­pants decide what they want the song to sound like and accom­plish lyri­cal­ly. Par­ti­ci­pants prac­tice sin­ging the song sec­tions with the lead artist as they go.

9. The lead artist takes new sec­tions home to set to music, and the pro­cess conti­nues until par­ti­ci­pants feel the song is com­plete, and final lyric and music edits are done to satis­fac­tion. Vocal har­mo­nies may be deve­lo­ped and taught.

10. The lead artist does a home recor­ding of the whole song so par­ti­ci­pants may prac­tice on their own and sing it along with the group in their week­ly session.

11. Using head­phones to iso­late their voice, par­ti­ci­pants use a phone or com­pu­ter to record them­selves sin­ging along with the lead artist’s track. Using audio soft­ware such as Band­camp or Auda­ci­ty, par­ti­ci­pants voice recor­dings are then edi­ted toge­ther to form a choir.

12. (Optio­nal): Song tracks are given to a remix artist for added beats and sound pro­ces­sing. The group can then edit a video toge­ther online using their media from the Pad­let, or give this mate­rial to a video artist for edi­ting. This pro­cess can be hands-on for par­ti­ci­pants if desi­red, as they work on edits with the remix and video artists.

From a par­ti­ci­pant : « Sound & Song has given me a way to express myself in sin­ging, using my brain to col­la­bo­rate with other in wri­ting lyrics and given me a sense of com­mu­ni­ty even though we were in our own homes. The pan­de­mic is very stress­ful and Sound & Song gave us a way of wor­king through our anxie­ties. Our song and video tur­ned out fan­tas­tic and it gave us a sense of accom­plish­ment and happiness. »

Vin­tage Voices fea­tures the voices of resi­dents living in the Long Term Care sys­tem sha­ring and respon­ding to music that they love ; it brings these voices to the rest of socie­ty via short radio clips. Resi­dents act as DJs ; they intro­duce songs and share their plea­sure and thoughts like any other radio DJ would do.

As a Psychotherapist/Music The­ra­pist wor­king in the Long Term Care sec­tor, I believe that crea­ti­vi­ty does not neces­sa­ri­ly have to be gene­ra­tive, but can also be about the pro­cess of consu­ming and respon­ding to art ; this is cri­ti­cal to enabling indi­vi­duals with com­plex health issues, such as those I work with in Long Term Care, to be able to contri­bute to the world of art and creativity.

In my work in Long Term Care, I wit­ness the nega­tive effects of our socie­ty’s ageism and ableism : Indi­vi­duals living in Long Term Care, fami­lies, and heal­th­care pro­vi­ders often struggle to have a voice, to be noti­ced, valued, and to receive the sup­port and recog­ni­tion that is nee­ded. The tone of Vin­tage Voices is light and fun, howe­ver it serves to ampli­fy sel­dom-heard voices and to put a face (or rather a voice!) to indi­vi­duals living in these set­tings, allo­wing them to show the value of life at eve­ry stage.

MATERIALS :

-por­table audio recor­der (I use a Zoom H4n)

-wind­sock to cover mic (to avoid plo­sive sounds during recor­ding speech)

-iPad/speaker (to lis­ten to music together)

-com­pu­ter with audio edi­ting pro­gram (I use a Mac with Logic Pro)

PROCESS :

1) I meet with inter­es­ted Long Term Care resi­dents (from now on known as guest DJs) to engage in a music-lis­te­ning inter­view in a pri­vate space. I explain that I’ll be recor­ding our voices and then we engage in simple gree­tings and intro­duc­tions, so the indi­vi­dual can get used to having a micro­phone held up to them while tal­king. I will model spea­king into it, but then keep the micro­phone close to the guest DJ to make sure their voice is clear.

2) We lis­ten to music toge­ther ! Some guest DJs may have a favou­rite song right away that they want to share. Some guest DJs may not be sure what to start with : in this case I might sug­gest a song or sin­ger this DJ has expres­sed enjoy­ment of before, or sug­gest a style of music that I know is gene­ral­ly popu­lar with the guest DJ’s age/cultural group to get the ball rol­ling… Often this stirs ideas for other songs and music, or may allow the indi­vi­dual to share their res­ponse and love for that par­ti­cu­lar song.

3) I may ask ques­tions like « What is it about music that is impor­tant to you ? » « Why do you like music/or this song ? » « What does it mean ? » (lite­ral­ly if in a dif­ferent lan­guage) or « What does it mean to you ? » Or I may not ask any ques­tions at all, and just get into enjoying the music with the guest DJ, sup­por­ting their res­ponses and joy.

TIP : The most impor­tant thing is just to enjoy lis­te­ning to the music toge­ther, so wha­te­ver approach is most moti­va­ting and enjoyable for the guest DJ is the way to go. As such, it does not neces­sa­ri­ly mat­ter if a guest DJ has advan­ced health and memo­ry issues… as long as they can express them­selves in some audible way, I can take the sounds and edit them into an episode.

4) I import the raw inter­views onto a com­pu­ter and edit them.  I cut out any conver­sa­tion not rela­ted to music or any audio/words that are more pri­vate, kee­ping only the resi­dent’s gree­tings, intro­duc­tions, one or two song/artist choices, their reflec­tions or memo­ries about the songs or music that they want to share with others, maybe some sin­ging along or excla­ma­tions of enjoy­ment, as well as goodbyes.

5) I then re-record or voice-over my own voice (using the Zoom por­table recor­der, which also acts as an audio inter­face, into Logic Pro) to intro­duce the show/DJ, and connect eve­ry­thing toge­ther and make it flow. I use a theme song under the intro­duc­tions and good­byes to  start and end the show.

SHARING THE EPISODES :

Fini­shed epi­sodes are mas­te­red by power­Sound, and our Vin­tage Voices epi­sodes are aired week­ly on the won­der­ful radio show 33–45-78 ! (please see links). I also may pro­vide a digi­tal copy to the fami­lies if reques­ted, but impor­tant­ly I remove the copy­righ­ted song (I will leave a few seconds of the song fading in and out ins­tead). We now also have a You Tube chan­nel to share the epi­sodes on (also inclu­ded in the links).

Our guest DJs and their fami­lies have been over­joyed while enga­ging in the pro­cess and upon hea­ring the fini­shed epi­sodes. Tony, who’s epi­sode you can lis­ten to in the audio sec­tion, exclai­med during the recor­ding pro­cess « this brings the music alive and makes life worth living ! » Elea­nor’s daugh­ter, Mau­reen (you can also hear Elea­nor’s epi­sode in the audio sec­tion) com­men­ted on kee­ping the epi­sode as a trea­su­red keep­sake, saying « It will be a beau­ti­ful memo­ry that I can always keep of mom. » Elea­nor’s daugh­ter recent­ly cal­led me with a fur­ther update, sha­ring that since her mom died she has lis­te­ned to it a lot, and had the idea to play the epi­sode at the fune­ral. She said how tou­ched eve­ryone atten­ding was… no one cried during the first half of the fune­ral, but there was « not a dry eye in the place » after they played Elea­nor’s epi­sode. They got to hear Elea­nor, saying music is good for « hel­ping people… they could be down­hear­ted, but it’ll bring it up, » and then get­ting to say good­bye in her own words : saying « oh ya ! bye bye eve­ry­bo­dy ! And I hope you folks all enjoy… this is all just so great ! »

A NOTE ON CONSENT AND PRIVACY :

Many indi­vi­duals living in Long Term Care have fami­ly mem­bers who are Sub­sti­tute Deci­sion Makers or Power of Attor­ney. I com­mu­ni­cate with both the guest DJ as well as their fami­ly mem­ber to ensure that they want to par­ti­ci­pate. I have a consent form that must be signed before I start an inter­view. Also when I form the inter­view into a more fini­shed epi­sode, I go back and play the epi­sode for both the guest DJ as well as their fami­ly mem­ber to make sure they are both hap­py with it before it is sha­red publicly.

An inter­view and music-lis­te­ning ses­sion can also bring up many memo­ries and emo­tions. I am avai­lable in my role as a Psychotherapist/Music The­ra­pist to pro­vide sup­port and pro­ces­sing as nee­ded. Please unders­tand that it is impor­tant to be able to connect a guest DJ with appro­priate sup­port as nee­ded, so please be aware of who in your facility/community you would connect a guest DJ to if they are in need of sup­port. These issues may come up during the inter­view and be recor­ded : as such, I edit all of the recor­dings myself and delete any­thing that should be private.

The C.A.R.E. Centre, a recrea­tio­nal orga­ni­za­tion for adults living with severe phy­si­cal disa­bi­li­ties, reco­gnises the impor­tance of art and expres­sion for their clients, par­ti­cu­lar­ly for those clients who are non-ver­bal. In addi­tion to incor­po­ra­ting art-making into dai­ly pro­gram­ming, C.A.R.E. has hos­ted a num­ber of artist resi­den­cies with Tea­ching Artist Louise Camp­bell, who has faci­li­ta­ted pro­jects ran­ging in dura­tion from 4‑days to 6 months, giving Louise, the clients and the care­gi­vers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know each other, and per­haps more impor­tant­ly for Louise as a guest artist to unders­tand the pro­gram and clients’ modes of communication.

The most ambi­tious of these pro­jects was also the most sur­pri­sing : the pod­cas­ting pro­ject Sto­ries of Care was sla­ted to begin in per­son at the C.A.R.E. Centre on March 23, 2020, ten days before the coro­na­vi­rus pan­de­mic was decla­red in Cana­da. Lucki­ly, pod­cas­ting is an ideal pro­ject to do at a dis­tance. In addi­tion, one of the most belo­ved pro­grams at C.A.R.E. is C.A.R.E. Radio, which conver­ted well to Zoom. Care­gi­ver Bru­no moved seam­less­ly into being a fabu­lous host, just as he is in per­son at C.A.R.E. The online video plat­form became the bridge to our clients and a way to move for­ward with the pod­cas­ting project. 

What real­ly made this pod­cast pro­ject fly was Exe­cu­tive Direc­tor Oli­via Quesnel’s ama­zing abi­li­ty to think crea­ti­ve­ly about how to connect with people. As a regu­lar part of her job, Oli­via culti­vates connec­tions and com­mu­ni­cates with C.A.R.E. clients using mul­tiple plat­forms, adap­ting to each client based on their abi­li­ties and home situa­tions. Just one example of Olivia’s crea­tive use of stan­dard tech­no­lo­gies is her phone conver­sa­tions with a client who is non-ver­bal. Oli­via set up a dai­ly phone call with during which she asked yes-no ques­tions, to which he respon­ded by pres­sing the touch­pad once for ‘no’ (beeeeep) and twice for ‘yes’ (beep-beeeeeep!!). 

Using the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form that was most appro­priate for the client, a series of ques­tions was used to prompt clients to talk, remi­nisce and share sto­ries. One of these ques­tions was ‘what do you hear around you right now?’ Clients’ obser­va­tions were recor­ded and com­pi­led in Epi­sode 3 : Here and there. A com­bi­na­tion of archi­val recor­dings, short ins­truc­tio­nal videos of at-home recor­ding acti­vi­ties, and recor­ded phone and Zoom calls, and musi­cal gifts crea­ted by musi­cians Louise Camp­bell, Amy Hor­vey and Tim Bra­dy gave us what we nee­ded for a pod­cas­ting series : audio material !

Each of the pod­casts was made in col­la­bo­ra­tion with C.A.R.E. clients and staff, with epi­sodes being publi­shed and sha­red once final appro­val was given by Oli­via and/or the appro­priate client. Client invol­ve­ment inclu­ded recor­ding audio to very detai­led edi­ting and author­ship by C.A.R.E. Centre client Rachel and her care­gi­ver Mischa in Epi­sode 5 : Tobii Sto­ries, a Day in the Life of Rachel to an epi­sode craf­ted as a gift from the musi­cians and care­gi­vers to a client who was very iso­la­ted due to her living situa­tion in Epi­sode 6 : Bliss, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Giota’s Song

Of this pro­ject, Artist-in-resi­dence Louise Camp­bell says, “I will remem­ber and trea­sure this pro­ject for what I have lear­ned about the power of human connec­tion – that is, our abi­li­ty and drive to connect with the people we care about.” C.A.R.E. Centre Exe­cu­tive Direc­tor Oli­via Ques­nel says, “Indi­vi­duals with disa­bi­li­ties have so much to com­mu­ni­cate and are very moved by sounds and music. The oppor­tu­ni­ty for our non-ver­bal clients to work with artists and musi­cians to create pod­casts and to tell their sto­ries is exci­ting. This pro­ject enabled those who often are not heard to express their thoughts and share their experiences.” 

As Bru­no would say at the end of a C.A.R.E. Radio epi­sode : Stay tuned next time for more Sto­ries of Care. Peace !

And the chat­ter begins from the clients and fami­ly : That was so fun ! I loved your jokes ! Are you coming to the Zoom dance par­ty tomor­row ? Hey, can we do a Zoom call later ? Bye, eve­ry­bo­dy ! See you next time !

Lis­ten here to the pod­cast series : Sto­ries of Care

Sto­ries of Care is pro­du­ced by the C.A.R.E. Centre, Inno­va­tions en concert, Bra­dy­works, with fun­ding from Que­bec’s Schools Host and Artist of Culture in Schools.

Faci­li­ta­tion, concep­tion & mon­tage by Artist in Resi­dence Louise Camp­bell.

GOAL : to deve­lop a dee­per appre­cia­tion of music and the visual arts and how they com­pli­ment each other. In this par­ti­cu­lar work­shop, par­ti­ci­pants were ins­pi­red by the music of Jab­bour, using the music as a spark for their art.

ACTIVITY : Art making is enri­ched when laye­red with a varie­ty of expe­riences and techniques. 

First, a musician(s) pre­sents their  his­to­ry and music, exchan­ging ideas that add ano­ther layer to the crea­tive pro­cess. In this case, Guillaume Jab­bour des­cribes his band, which includes Bill Gos­sage, Carl Rufh and Bill Col­lier. The group’s iden­ti­ty soli­di­fied during their tour of Bri­tish Colum­bia in 2015, when the musi­cians began to unders­tand that they had found their place on the Cana­dian folk music scene, iden­ti­fying them­selves par­ti­cu­lar­ly with the offi­cial lan­guage mino­ri­ties of the coun­try : the English-spea­king com­mu­ni­ties of Que­bec and the French-spea­king com­mu­ni­ties of Cana­da. Refer to the video for how Guillaume does this.

Next, we learn about the art tech­nique to be used in dra­wing and pain­ting. Then we lis­ten to the music and draw. Final­ly, we reflect and get and give feed­back. Next time, choose ano­ther musi­cians’ work to ins­pire your creativity.

Out­comes :

•       dee­per listening
•       heigh­te­ned senses
•       increa­sed awa­re­ness of the connec­tion bet­ween music and visual art.
•       ease, confi­dence, and joy in lis­te­ning to music and crea­ting art.
•       dee­pe­ned rela­tion­ships among­st group mem­bers through sha­red expe­rience and sha­ring artworks.
•       a grea­ter sense of connec­tion and ensemble with artist, musi­cian, and participants.

MATERIALS : paper with pen­cil, crayons, colou­red pen­cils, mar­kers, oil pas­tels etc. and or paint and brush.

PROCESS :

1. Lis­ten to the music while thin­king about the theme, Pas­sage Through Time. What does it make you think about ? What images or memo­ries come to mind ? Using the music and the theme as ins­pi­ra­tion, create a nar­ra­tive dra­wing – a dra­wing that tells a visual story.
2. Let us draw. I am using the example of dra­wing with a pen­cil. Pen­cil marks, Com­po­si­tion, Abs­tract and figu­ra­tive are concepts in pain­ting and dra­wing. Refer to the video for examples. You choose your mate­rials of choice. Here are concepts to consider :

• Pen­cil marks – Expe­riment with the side and point of the pen­cil, increase, and decrease pres­sure. You can create light, medium, dark, thin, and thick lines.
• Com­po­si­tion in a dra­wing is the ‘what am I going to put and where am I going to place it on the paper’. When playing with com­po­si­tion, remem­ber that dra­wings can pass the edges of the paper and over­lap other papers.
• In dra­wing and pain­ting, abs­tract or non-figu­ra­tive is based on shape, tex­ture, colour, and value (light and dark). Figu­ra­tive is based on a per­son, place, or thing. Figu­ra­tive abs­trac­tion is a com­bi­na­tion of the two. Pers­pec­tive – Objects that are clo­ser usual­ly start at the bot­tom of the page, are big­ger with more detail and colour. The oppo­site is true for objects that are fur­ther on.

3. As you draw, per­io­di­cal­ly stop the music, share thoughts, ideas and in pro­cess art­work to ins­pire each other.

4. When the music and art­works are fini­shed, share them and discuss.

You can pick any of Jabbour’s music as an ins­pi­ra­tion for visual crea­tion. Lis­ten to the music, what will you draw ?

« Lis­te­ning to the music was like taking a peek into someo­ne’s life. I des­cri­bed it as « dan­cing through life ». The dra­wing star­ted with a bean (a cof­fee bean!) and evol­ved into a rain­bow dance burs­ting with new life. I real­ly enjoyed the art music class today. » Shan­non, work­shop participant

*Please contact Deirdre at deirdre@artwill.ca  if you’d like to know more about the project.

To hear more of Jab­bour : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNJv456VqSBLWXO8kSBDOKA/videos

More links…

Jab­bour Round the Clock Album · 2016 : https://soundcloud.com/gjband/sets/round-the-clock-2016

Les Fruits · Jab­bour ℗ 2019 Jab­bour Relea­sed on : 2019-05-13 Auto-gene­ra­ted by You­Tube :  https://youtu.be/QGuonIekvG4

Honey · Jab­bour ℗ 2018 Jab­bour Relea­sed on : 2018-04-13 Auto-gene­ra­ted by You­Tube : https://youtu.be/QGuonIekvG4

He Doesn’t Need You Jab­bour Album Round the Clock Licen­sed to You­Tube by CD Baby (on behalf of Jab­bour), CD Baby Sync Publi­shing : https://youtu.be/Jn8RpaTQAvE

These Pre­sence War­mups pre­pare the body, breath and mind for expres­sive and crea­tive music-making. They are most effec­tive when used at the start of a rehear­sal and can easi­ly be incor­po­ra­ted into cho­ral warm-ups, les­sons, or your indi­vi­dual dai­ly prac­tice. They sup­port body awa­re­ness and increase pre­sence by connec­ting body, breath, sound and space.

The exer­cises are ins­pi­red by and have been adap­ted from Body Map­ping, Alexan­der Tech­nique, Qi Gong, Conti­nuum Move­ment, and sound healing.

For more infor­ma­tion, contact Dina Cin­dric at dinacindric@gmail.com.

1. CONSTRUCTIVE REST GUIDED MEDITATION (3 mins.)

Construc­tive Rest is an effec­tive tool used by Alexan­der Tech­nique and Body Map­ping prac­ti­tio­ners to – among other things – release ten­sion from the body and deve­lop awareness.

It is nor­mal­ly done lying on your back and can take 10–15 minutes. I have adap­ted it here, com­bi­ning ele­ments of Alexan­der Tech­nique and Body Map­ping, into a shor­ter 3‑minute gui­ded medi­ta­tion that can be done in a sea­ted posi­tion (or adap­table for stan­ding), making it sui­table for the class­room, com­mu­ni­ty centre, or rehear­sal studio.

I begin all of my choir rehear­sals and pia­no and voice les­sons with a varia­tion of this gui­ded medi­ta­tion and have wit­nes­sed the posi­tive effects it has on my stu­dents in mind, body, and expres­sion. Use the audio guide below to get you started !

2. DRAWING DOWN THE HEAVENS (2–5+ mins. )

This exer­cise comes from the prac­tice of Qi Gong which is an ancient Chi­nese exer­cise tech­nique that involves coor­di­na­ting move­ment, breath, and mind to pro­mote the free flow of ener­gy around the body.

It is a per­fect ope­ning war­mup as it quiets the mind, increases ener­gy and focus, ali­gns the body, and connects body and breath.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Stand com­for­ta­bly with your feet shoul­der-width apart, knees soft, arms at your sides.
• Feel your feet balan­ced and firm­ly plan­ted on the earth. Allow your spine to leng­then. Take a moment here.
• Inhale and float the hands out to the sides, shoul­ders relaxed. Ima­gine you are dra­wing ener­gy from the earth into your body.
• Rotate the wrists, hands facing up to the sky. Bend the elbows.
• On the exhale, the palms wash down in front of the body. Ima­gine you are let­ting go of any ten­sion, wor­ries or stress.

Repeat the exer­cise 3, 6, 9, or 12 times.

3. WATER PLAY (15+ mins.)

”Water Play” is ins­pi­red by Conti­nuum Move­ment. Conti­nuum Move­ment is a prac­tice that uses move­ment, breath, the reso­nance of sound and mea­ning. From Emi­lie Conrad, foun­der of Conti­nuum Move­ment : “We are basi­cal­ly fluid beings that have arri­ved on land… All living pro­cesses owe their lineage to the move­ment of water.”

This exer­cise explores move­ment as ima­gi­ned in, through and as water. It is pos­sible to do the exer­cise in a shor­ter per­iod of time, but it is most effec­tive when allo­wed as much time as nee­ded. Give your­self 20 minutes or more the first time you do it. The next time you do it, your body will recall what you did and you will find you’ll be able to dive into the work more qui­ck­ly and deeply.

Your move­ments can be as big or as small as you like : from rai­sing an arm or leg and explo­ring the entire space around you, to sim­ply a sigh of the head or a release of a hand. Play. Explore. Enjoy the pro­cess and mar­vel at the beau­ty of the fluid being that you are !

See scores for ins­truc­tions. Read all of the ins­truc­tions before you begin. The exer­cise can be done sea­ted or lying down.

4. BODY HUM (10+ mins.)

The “Body Hum” is ins­pi­red by both Conti­nuum Move­ment and other sound hea­ling prac­tices. It uses sound – a gentle hum – to send vibra­tions through to areas of the body to retune it.

The vibra­tions will be more dee­ply felt if the exer­cise is done fol­lo­wing “Water Play” but it can also be done on its own.

See scores for ins­truc­tions. Read all of the ins­truc­tions before you begin. The exer­cise can be done stan­ding, sea­ted or lying down.

The pro­ject Moi_Espace Public was born out of a convic­tion that artis­tic crea­tion can be a fruit­ful space for exchange on eve­ry­day issues, whe­ther emo­tio­nal  or social. My desire was to meet and exchange with people, and faci­li­tate their artis­tic expres­sion on two vast and com­plex sub­jects : public space and the expe­rience of women in our cur­rent socie­ty. As a musi­cian inter­es­ted in inter­dis­ci­pli­na­ry, the pro­ject is based on the crea­tion of audio­vi­sual works in the broa­dest sense of the term.

STRUCTURE :

Before the deve­lop­ment of the project

1.    Based on prior research, I thought about the themes I would like to address. 

2.    I chose the angle of both themes to be addres­sed, in my case the per­so­nal expe­rience of women in public spaces cho­sen by each par­ti­ci­pant. I wan­ted to learn about the expe­riences of dif­ferent women in these spaces and how they per­ceive them­selves in those spaces.

3.    I ela­bo­ra­ted a score-text-guide to incite the crea­tion of the audio­vi­sual pieces without nar­ro­wing the concep­tual and aes­the­tic angle of the pro­ject. I inten­ded to work with women from dif­ferent back­grounds (cultu­ral, gene­ra­tio­nal, etc.), pro­fes­sions and artis­tic visions. This score is com­po­sed of an 8 steps crea­tive pro­cess. (See the score below)

Prac­ti­cal part of the project

1.    Dis­cus­sions (Steps 1 to 4 in the score):

I chose some phrases and ques­tions that would moti­vate conver­sa­tions about the com­mon themes of the pro­ject. The order of these items in the guide were cho­sen to move from a gene­ral to a sub­jec­tive scope in conver­sa­tions with participants :

a. In 1, I chose sen­tences from a lite­ra­ry work  impor­tant to me whose author, the French phi­lo­so­pher Hen­ri Lefebvre, speaks about the pro­duc­tion of public spaces. These sen­tences allow me to intro­duce the cen­tral ques­tion of the pro­ject and to begin to sti­mu­late per­so­nal reflec­tion on this theme.

b. In 2, 3 and 4 I have crea­ted ques­tions to invite people to place them­selves in the cen­ter of the theme and approach it in a per­so­nal and objec­tive way accor­ding to a dai­ly or punc­tual expe­rience. Usual­ly, people are imme­dia­te­ly inter­es­ted  in a per­so­nal theme. If this is not the case, I invite them to tell me more about a par­ti­cu­lar per­so­nal expe­rience, their work envi­ron­ment, the paths they make eve­ry day or the spaces they often visit, in order to choose an angle to explore in the project.

It is at these stages that I take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know each per­son bet­ter : where they come from ? Who do they live with, what is their work ? What do they do out­side of work ? I let them share as much as they want, and I explain that they can also hide from me as much as they want. I use this time to share per­so­nal expe­riences and thoughts of mine as well. On the prac­ti­cal side, these conver­sa­tions also serve as a tool to help me in the crea­tive part of the piece : once I know more about people’s fee­lings and pre­fe­rences, I can sug­gest some stra­te­gies in case they feel lost later in the process.

2.    Turn these thoughts into art mate­rial (Step 5–7 in the score):

a.    As I enter the more prac­ti­cal part of the pro­ject, I ask people to find visual and audio mate­rials that represent the ideas from the pre­vious steps. I take advan­tage of this time to find out what their rela­tion­ship to art is, what kind of art, music, movies they like, etc. From these conver­sa­tions I get tools that help me sti­mu­late their crea­ti­vi­ty, in case they feel stuck at some point and need help for the work to come to frui­tion. I let each per­son come up with their own ideas by accep­ting eve­ry­thing : refe­rences to famous works, per­so­nal pho­tos, images from the inter­net, memo­ries, sound effects, etc. To help them unlock their ima­gi­na­tion, I can give some examples based on what I know about that per­son or even give per­so­nal examples of my own that might relate to what they are trying to express. If the per­son feels blo­cked, I don’t hesi­tate to offer one or two ideas as a start and then let them deve­lop that idea. For example, if the per­son likes to draw, I can sug­gest that they start wor­king on a dra­wing they have made that relates to the theme of the work. If they like poe­try, I can sug­gest that they write sen­tences and choose key­words as refe­rences for the images and sounds to record.

b.    Once we have the mate­rials, I ask them to create a ske­le­ton, a struc­ture for the piece such as an order of sec­tions, a main theme to explore, mate­rials that can over­lap each other, or a begin­ning, middle and end of an idea.

c.     I then ask people to repro­duce or find and record these sounds and images. In some crea­tions, the mate­rial was repro­du­ced or col­lec­ted by the per­son them­selves with wha­te­ver means were avai­lable to them (their own ins­tru­ment, images from the inter­net, recor­dings and fil­ming with their phones or per­so­nal came­ras and recor­ders). In other cases, I used my own equip­ment (recor­der, micro­phones and camera).

Smart­phones can be a good tool for taking sound and images. Some came­ras (such as Go-Pros) and recor­ders (such the Zoom brand) have a rela­ti­ve­ly acces­sible price and inter­face. Final­ly, there are dif­ferent web­sites where images and sounds can be down­loa­ded for free (it is impor­tant to note the type of license gran­ted by each website):

Sound : Free­sound

Images : Uns­plash

Images and videos : Pexels

Sound, images and video : Vide­vo

3.    Com­ple­tion of the work (Step 8 in the score)

To com­plete the work, I ask people to expe­riment with put­ting the mate­rial pro­du­ced in step 7 into the pre­vious­ly thought-out struc­ture. If the context allows it, ideal­ly, each per­son can make their own work inde­pen­dent­ly. I advise them to be pre­pa­red to adapt the struc­ture or mate­rial and refine it to their liking. If the context does not allow for each per­son to finish their own work alone, I can sup­port them tech­ni­cal­ly or creatively.

About the tools for this step, there are also some free edi­ting soft­wares that are adap­ted to all ope­ra­ting sys­tems like Open Shot. In addi­tion, the Davin­ci Resolve soft­ware offers a free ver­sion with many pos­si­bi­li­ties for sound and visual editing.

See the web­site or You­Tube for tuto­rial videos to intro­duce these programs.

4.          The dis­tri­bu­tion of the works

In order to dif­fuse these works to the public, I have crea­ted a web page dedi­ca­ted to the pro­ject. In addi­tion to being able to watch the videos crea­ted within the pro­ject, eve­ryone has access to the score-guide avai­lable in French, English, Spa­nish and Portuguese.

Below you can see the score of the pro­ject as well as the main ideas and results of the work done by Chan­tal Gar­cia and Maria­ne­la Rey.