Community Music

Course content

This course seeks to explore and critically investigate different perspectives from, and understandings of, community music and collective-oriented music practices. The students are challenged to explore what the notion of 'community' in the arts is, and to create activities that strengthen a sense of community and inclusion in formal, informal, and non-formal learning environments. Students learn about artistic approaches and pedagogical strategies that seek to facilitate and animate participation in music and the arts, where ethics of practices are carefully considered. The starting point for the course is the view that music and the arts are social practices in a multicultural and diverse society, where cultural relevance and cultural responsiveness is significant and where difference is seen as a value. Knowledge about music, dance, and drama as inclusive and exclusive practices, creative, performing, and transformative activities are emphasized. Relevant themes are music and social justice and change, sustainability of community activities, local-global perspectives on music, music and well-being, music and identity, entrepreneurship and project management, aesthetic learning processes and bodily learning, and interdisciplinary arts activities.

Knowledge

the student

• has thorough research-based knowledge about different perspectives on community, and community music
• has advanced knowledge about questions in community music, and how to connect these to aesthetic learning processes and bodily learning in diverse contexts
• has in-depth understanding of music, dance and drama as inclusive and exclusive practices, as well as difference and diversity as resources for art-making

Skills

the student

• can, on an advanced level, collaborate with different learners and teachers and other stakeholders plan and carry out a community music project with the purpose of strengthening a sense of community and inclusion in a way that is culturally relevant and responsive
• can on advanced level use own professional skills in music to design music activities that combine artistic qualities with a view on difference as a value, while also considering sustainability, power, and privilege within the community encounter
• can critically evaluate and discuss their own and others community music projects, with the help of relevant academic and professional questions from the field and research

General competence

the student

• can use and present perspectives from community music to contribute with new perspectives on quality in music and the arts more broadly and maintain inclusion and diversity in educational settings.
• has reflective and explorative perspectives on their own professional knowledge in music, pedagogy, and artistic approaches

Learning methods and activities

Learning methods:

Workshops, seminars, lectures, presentations, developing and working in communities of practice, self-directed learning.

Compulsory activities.

There are three compulsory activities in this course.