The social impact of music making

PLAY GROUND – Partner exchange & conference Ghent (Belgium)

6 & 7 December 2022

Visiting the workshops @ Kopergietery Rabot

• The importance of “embedding” your projects within a context where the children are familiar with, like their school. 

• The added value of a supporting network available in the schools: teachers, social workers, the parents, friends, etc. 

• The question remains also for the workshop-givers: how far do you go in your work? You are an artistic coach, not a social worker, but nevertheless you’re confronted with issues that exceed your artistic role. How do you cope with that? In the case of Kopergietery they have the school network that can take care of that, and that’s an added value. 

Points of reflection: 

• It needs to be clear from the beginning what the goals of the project are: are you really looking for new talent or do you see yourself as fulfilling a social role? 

• How do you “screen” your workshop givers? These are people that are going to work with young and vulnerable children, so how do you make sure they fit the bill? It may look they fit as there’s some resemblance in ethnic/cultural background, but at the same time you want to make sure they don’t have issues themselves and are up to the task. 

• How do you avoid creating some kind of cultural apartheid by having “regular” workshops for the white middle class children and “special workshops” for the others? 

Conference on “The social impact of music making”

Keynote by Prof. Dr. Gillian Howell (Melbourne University – AUS)

• Any activity in music making has an impact on different levels, both socially and artistically. 

For example: Voice can be a space of social impact; a mechanism for recognition, for representation or the process of an outcome. 

• Music in itself is a voice (both sound based and story based) that can be used for example to reframe narratives, to “talk back” or to counter a story. 

• The idea of “giving a voice” however, is problematic. People already have a voice, they are speaking, so you don’t need to give them a voice, that’s a very paternalistic approach. You can strengthen their voices however, making sure they are understood and listened to. For example: a voice in a new country (refugees). Workshops/songs can be an outlet to strengthen their voices and tell a more complex story of their situation. 

• Voices can have a cultural value as well: song, voice and music van reaffirm cultural identity in communities that have suffered from cultural genocide such as Aboriginals or native Americans. 

• How do we “represent” the voices of others? It is more a work of facilitation & mentoring, where “guidance & expertise” sometimes stand in opposition of “reciprocity & exchange”. The first being rather extractive, while the latter is more relational. You should always ask the question “is what you represent rally what they want?”. This needs to be done by constantly checking, confirming, asking permission, etc. And off course this slows the process down quite a bit. 

HOW DO WE, ARTIST-MENTORS, WORK WITH THE VOICE OF OTHERS? 

• The importance of protecting young people from being framed in a way the projects claim to counter: for example, portraying refugee musicians merely as refugees, with more emphasis on their refugee status than on their musical skills. 

• Be conscious of the impact your project might have on the participants: for example, the “Afghan women orchestra” being lauded by the same western powers responsible for invading Afghanistan and being used in a western political narrative (they performed at the WEF -conference on investments in Afghanistan’s reconstruction). The consequences for the girls where devastating off course, as they were never heard off once the landed back in Afghanistan. 

PROJECT PARAMETERS WILL ALWAYS EXIST, BUT WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS IF OUR MUSICAL WORK IN SOME WAYS RELIES ON THE PRODUCTION OF DESIRES IT CAN NOT FULLFILL? 

Points of reflection: 

In order to implement successful projects that take into account beneficiaries’ concerns and needs, one should permanently address the following questions:

- On whose terms are these music activities taking place? 

- Whose interests are being served? 

- How are these interests navigated in different project phases? 

- What are pressure points of compromise? 

Panel discussion: Gillian Howell (AUS), Thomas Noël (BE), Hilde Declercq (BE) and Zeno Popescu (BE/RO), moderated by An de Bisschop (BE)

Side note: it is somewhat paradoxical that a whole white panel will now discuss on the social impact of music making with vulnerable people that are often everything but all white. (cfr. “Giving a voice” from the keynote)

• People in projects often adapt their voice to what they think the project expects/wants from them. For example, Thomas recalls working with a Palestinian musician who told him: “being a Palestinian is a full-time job”. This is also true for refugee orchestra’s, music ensembles for disabled, etc. When do we transcend these labels and when do the participants just become “musicians”? If we set up target groups of beneficiaries, there’s a real risk we are reproducing what we want to counter.

• How can we overcome this? Isn’t it better to focus on a more neutral “artistic value” as Zeno Popescu argues? This is for him a way of not enforcing an identity. (For example, he had young children from Molenbeek sing in Hungarian). 

• Art can be an escape from labels. In these projects, participants can be nothing more than musicians, and that is what they often like the best. 

• It is sometimes argued that we have to lower our expectations in these so-called “social-artistic” projects, that we should look to the process and not the result, that “them participating” is more valuable than the actual artistic product. But for who is that the case? Is it a way we white middle class teachers can feel better about ourselves? What message do we give to the participants if we don’t expect the same level of quality from them as we do from others? It is almost a way of telling them: “we think you can’t do it, at least not like us, so we are happy if you just try”.  

• This has to do with the goals of the project: are we offering therapy or social support or are we pursuing artistic goals or both? And if it’s both, when are we happy? When are the participants happy? And is it the work of artists to do this or not? Important questions that need to be addressed.

Video - Play Ground Conference Gent

From 6 till 8 december 2022 the Play Ground project partners attended a conference on the social impact of music making that was organised by Play Ground project partner Ha’concerts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Gent, Belgium. An international lecture by Gillian Howell from Melbourne University was followed by a panel discussion and workshops for musicians and culture professionals from Belgium.