Music for social impact: practitioners' contexts, work, and beliefs

我们如何更好地理解艺术在快速变化的社会中的作用，这是一个继续困扰着世界各地公共话语的问题。在“为艺术而艺术”和“为非艺术结果而艺术”之间存在着张力，前者被视为艺术的内在属性提供独特的内在价值，后者突出了艺术可以带来的更广泛的好处，如经济、健康和社会福利的改善。在音乐界，人们特别强烈地声称，音乐固有的“普世力量”能带来个人或社会利益。一种相反的观点是，音乐可以达到的效果并不是普遍存在的。相反，为了可靠地达到效果，音乐活动的内容和呈现必须根据背景和预期结果进行仔细调整。这些紧张关系影响了越来越多的参与性音乐活动，这些活动被提供给世界各地由社会需求或贫困定义的群体，这些活动侧重于被边缘化或被排斥的群体(在贫困、冲突或社会动荡的地区，包括难民和移民、监狱中的人、无家可归的人等)。这些具有社会影响力的音乐制作(SIMM)活动帮助人们创作具有艺术价值的音乐作品(表演)，同时也帮助他们实现既定的社会目标(如包容、赋权、社区建设、激进主义)。由于SIMM活动通常聘请专业音乐家作为促进者-培训者，因此结果反映了这些实践者在他们的课程中所做的事情，他们为工作带来的技能、信念和动机，以及他们运作的条件和限制。然而，人们对这些从业者的正式了解很少。现有的研究主要是单个项目的案例研究，或者是受单一模式启发的项目群。SIMM是一个夸张地宣称音乐参与的社会效益的领域，在这个领域，批评性的，包括自我批评的从业者的观点被放在第二位。公共艺术资源的减少增加了“讲最好的故事”而不是批判性地反思实践的压力。因此，对这类工作的复杂性的了解往往受到限制，发现问题和提出解决办法的机会也很有限。为了理解SIMM活动的价值及其潜力，我们必须询问参与其中的人及其原因。该项目将从交付工作的实践者的角度对整个领域进行综合的跨文化分析，对SIMM实践者进行系统的深入分析，以及他们的背景、培训和信仰如何影响他们开展工作的方式以及评估和改进其有效性。通过对四个国家(比利时、芬兰、英国、哥伦比亚)的组织或项目的深入访谈和案例研究，该项目将揭示SIMM从业者的特征。国家选择反映了具有相关实践的地点，以及SIMM的不同文化和政治背景，提供了对当地和全球因素的洞察。实践者自己对其工作的实际社会影响的理解将被检查，找出有助于或阻碍这种欣赏的因素。通过对实践者所经历的激励和压力的背景敏感理解，这项研究将为培训(如何支持有韧性但能反思的实践者的发展)、委托和筹资(如何支持监测和评价，允许并从试验和失败中吸取教训)以及创造性地发展最佳做法(通过加强跨专业知识交流的机会和框架)提供见解。

How we best understand the role of arts in the rapidly changing society is a question that continues to preoccupy public discourse worldwide. There is a tension between "art for art's sake", where the intrinsic properties of art are seen to deliver unique inherent value, and "art for non-artistic outcomes", highlighting wider benefits art can deliver, such as economic, health, and social welfare improvements. Within the world of music particularly strong claims have been made for its inherent "universal power" to bring personal or social benefits. A countervailing view is that there is nothing universal about the effects that music can achieve. Rather, to reliably achieve impact, the content and presentation of musical activity must be carefully adjusted according to the context and the intended outcome. These tensions have influenced a growing body of participatory music-making activities being offered to groups around the world defined by their social needs or deprivation, work which focusses on marginalised or excluded groups (in regions of poverty, conflict, or social disruption, including refugees and migrants, people in prison, homeless people, etc.). These Socially Impactful Music Making (SIMM) Activities assist people to generate artistically valued musical outputs (performances) while also helping them to achieve defined social goals (such as inclusion, empowerment, community building, activism). As SIMM activities generally employ professional musicians as facilitator-trainers, the outcomes therefore reflect what these practitioners do in their sessions, the skills, beliefs and motivations they bring to their work, and the conditions and constraints under which they operate. Little is formally known about these practitioners, however. Existing research is dominated by case studies of individual projects, or clusters of projects inspired by a single model. SIMM is a field in which grandiose claims are made for the social benefits of musical engagement, and where critical, including self-critical, practitioner perspectives are put in second place. Declining public resource for the arts adds to the pressure to "tell the best stories" rather than critically reflect on practice. As a result, understanding of the complexities of such work is frequently constrained and opportunities to identify problems and propose solutions are limited. To understand the value of SIMM activities and their potential, we must interrogate who is involved, and why. This project will provide an integrative cross-cultural analysis of the field as a whole from the perspective of the practitioners who deliver the work, undertaking a systematic in-depth analysis of SIMM practitioners, and how their backgrounds, training, and beliefs affect the way they carry out their work and assess and improve its effectiveness. Through in-depth interviews and case studies of organisations or projects across four countries (Belgium, Finland, the UK, Columbia), this project will uncover the characteristics of the SIMM practitioner. Country selection reflects locations with relevant practice to investigate, with different cultural and political contexts for SIMM, offering insights into local versus global factors.Practitioners' own understanding of the actual social impact of their work will be examined, identifying factors which help or hinder this appreciation. Through a context-sensitive understanding of incentives and pressures experienced by practitioners, this research will provide insights for training (how to support the development of resilient but reflective practitioners), commissioning and funding (how to support monitoring and evaluation which allows for, and learns from, experimentation and failure), and the creative development of best practice (through enhanced opportunities and frameworks for interprofessional knowledge exchange).