Musical Transformations: Collaborative music making with people of marginalised genders

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This research explores how collaborative music making is created by, and can create, spaces of care and collective resistance that challenge systems of power and gender inequality. It offers a contribution at the intersection of anthropology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, gender studies, and music sector policymaking and practice. My position as a musician, anthropologist and worker at a music charity enables me to bring together different but connected sites/groups of people: grassroots music charity Girls Rock London (which provides music making opportunities for women, girls, and trans and non-binary people), queer-feminist band Glorybox, and a range of musicians and music organisers. I am taking an ethnographic approach: a long-term, qualitative method grounded in the perspectives of research participants, including myself, as a Girls Rock London trustee and Glorybox bandmember. My 'fieldwork' comprises participation in Glorybox rehearsals, performances and residencies, and Girls Rock London workshops, events and meetings. I will also lead interviews with Glorybox members; Girls Rock London project participants, staff and volunteers; and a range of musicians and music organisers. Placing self-organised music making in conversation with the arts, music education, charity and commercial music sectors, this research aims to investigate and strengthen connections between those sectors and anthropology; support and improve the practice of organisations using music to address exclusions experienced by young people and adults of marginalised genders; ground practice and policy in theory and research; and contribute to research that is grounded in the lived experiences and perspectives of people of marginalised genders.