Research Projects, Publications and Presentations
Publications
The 2022 National Policy Summit: A Cross-Sectoral Look at Music and Music Education in Canada
September 2023 | Policy Summit Report
The Coalition for Music Education in Canada
At a time of significant social change, rapid and constant economic disruption, and significant consequences to educational practices and priorities, the Coalition for Music Education (CMEC), with the support of multiple partners, aims to create a new and needed pathway for policy and advocacy action at the local, provincial, and federal levels. In response to great
disruption and diminishing resources for cultural and artistic enterprise, there is a need for thoughtful and concerted efforts on behalf of music education across Canada.
With this in mind, the Coalition facilitated a two-stage multiple format national discussion and engaged in a process toward a comprehensive, diverse, and forward-looking agenda.
With such a challenge in mind, CMEC invited a myriad of educators, arts administrators, researchers, musicians and music industry leaders to contribute to a national, cross-sectoral discussion and set an agenda for policy and advocacy action for music education in Canada. The symposium and policy summit were a first of its kind, unique opportunity for discussion, sharing of information, and collaboration among a representative cross section of music fields acting in multiple areas of Canadian society.
Knowledge Mobilizations
“Campus, community, and deci-rebellions: (Re)claiming space for sounding”
July 2024 | Panel paper as part of the International Society for Music Education, Helsinki, Finland
Laura Menard, PhD
The COVID-19 pandemic’s fundamental disruption to post-secondary campus acoustemologies (Feld, 1996) continues to shape sonic expectations. Focusing on my experiences coordinating an accessible community-engaged music hub operating out of a major university in Ontario, Canada, concerns around student sound-making (i.e., ‘noise’) are being communicated continually by university staff and faculty as students – and along with them, student-centered activities – return to campus. I share challenges around the sonic student-centered revitalization of campus space through what I am calling ‘deci-rebellions’: ways in which individuals, ensembles, and student groups are reclaiming sonic agency (LaBelle, 2018) as they push back against calls for quiet in this period of pandemic emergence, improvising sonic outputs in digital and live instrumental workshopping, rehearsing, and performing. With a nod towards public space discourse (Massey, 2005), these encounters lead me to question: What are indicators of sonic vitality and sustainability on campus; and why does supporting sonic activism (Johnson,2015) feel more urgent than ever?
Keywords: sound, agency, students, campus, pandemic, public space
“Educative tracings: Sonic drifting towards sustainable futures in music education”
July 2024 | Panel paper as part of the International Society for Music Education, Helsinki, Finland
Laura Menard, PhD
Exploring the notion that the sustainability of music education depends upon listening to – and through – the voices of the past, to the spectral traces and reverberations of experience, this paper invites novel considerations for ways forward by listening backward. Inspired by Gallagher’s (2015) “Sounding ruins,” I reflect upon the creation of an audio drift, constructed out of a series of interviews conducted with high school music educators in Ontario, Canada during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic as they considered the future of music education. Grounded in acoustemological (Feld, 1996) perception, this presentation includes a sharing of the audio drift as a means of collective (i.e., listener-engaged) earwitnessing (Schafer, 1977; Wargo, 2018), providing a foundation for dreaming out loud (Lewis, 2022). Through this paper, I invite considerations of the educative components of researcher-practitioners’ own sounded histories, tuning into what we have – and have not – heard through our research and in our classrooms, in so doing, addressing vital the questions: “Who is music education for?” “What can the sounds of the past tell us about the future?” and “What are the consequences if we do not heed them?”
Keywords: research, sound studies, earwitnessing, music education
Sounding out, bringing in: Bridging institutional and community spaces through music at SoundLife Scarborough
May 9, 2024 | Part of the Creative Communities Commons' Speaker Series at School of Cities
Navshimmer Kalra, Katherine Marshall, Laura Menard, Laura Risk and Lynn Tucker
This interactive presentation, featuring five core student and faculty members of the SoundLife Scarborough (SLS) Team at the University of Toronto Scarborough, examined the roles that community music-making can play in broadening interaction and engagement between the space of the university and that of the wider community. Using SLS programming as a case study, the team shared structural considerations, lived experiences, and lingering questions about promoting well-being, creating access, and engaging in reciprocal relationships through participatory music-making.
Additional Knowledge Mobilizations:
Collaborations
No Need to Vanish (NNTV)
Dr. Parisa Sabet
By leveraging collaboration and resource-sharing, we will contribute to the development of an adaptive learning system tailored to individual skill sets, backgrounds, and learning goals.
Between 2025-2028, NNTV, in collaboration with SLS, will co-present several workshops through our community-engaged programming. This hands-on experience will provide valuable feedback for refining the adaptive learning system, ensuring it meets the diverse needs of learners.
To further support NNTV in the testing and implementation of the Adaptive Learning System, SLS will help:
- Implement pilot programs within our community-engaged initiatives to test the adaptive learning system in real-world scenarios.
- Conduct focus groups with students and educators to gather detailed feedback on the system’s effectiveness and user experience.
- Collaborate on research initiatives to study the impact and effectiveness of the adaptive learning system.
- Contribute to the development of supplementary educational resources that complement the adaptive learning system.
By supporting this project, we aim to enhance educational offerings and foster a supportive, equitable, and sustainable arts community. Learn more about the project here: noneedtovanish.com/
Current Research Projects
Amplify!
Dr. Kotoka Suzuki
Amplify! is a mentorship program with a special emphasis to support female and/or non-binary musicians in the Scarborough and UTSC community interested in music-making and production. The program will offer Scarborough youth from local high schools’ access to professional training, guidance, and resources needed to thrive in the music industry with no previous background and at no cost.
Blurring boundaries: Expanding conceptions of sustainability through blended roles in community music-making
Laura Menard, PhD; Navshimmer Kalra; Katherine Marshall
This paper presents two autoethnographies in ‘boundary-blurring’ through community music-making opportunities derived from undergraduate facilitator/participant/administrator experiences at SoundLife Scarborough (SLS) at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC). SLS’s values of access, well-being, flexible music-making, and reciprocity dovetail with several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Here, we explore boundary-blurring engagements with this community music program as a means of sustainability: of redistributing power across age, culture, and experience; of building institution- and community-oriented relationships; and addressing local issues of access to arts programming and education. This paper analyzes the writers’ experiences of the development of relationships of reciprocity and broadening community, leading to sustainability-oriented development inclusive of playing, learning, and discovery. Together, we ask: How are conditions for sustainable community music making supported by boundary-blurring engagements?
Keywords: Boundaries, community music, sustainability, autoethnography
Community Music Database Project
Dr Roger Mantie
Community Music organizations provide group-based performing and/or learning opportunities that emphasize active collaboration with other musicians across a wide range of ages, abilities, foci, instrumentation, commitment levels, and group structures. This database will provide individuals seeking community music opportunities across the country with information regarding organizations in their area; and community music organizations with a place to share their activities. See Roger’s Website
Scarborough Music Archive
Co-Leads: Prof. Mark Campbell and Prof. Laura Risk
This project works through two interrelated concepts, reciprocity and relation, to achieve a higher level of connection to the local community amongst our students. Students in several Music & Culture courses are co-creating a Scarborough music archive as a curricular innovation that will serve future generations of UTSC students as well as the local Scarborough community. This project works to deepen connections between local music, future curricula, and members of the local Scarborough community.
The Music Pathways Project
Laura Menard and Lynn Tucker
The Music Pathways Project (TMPP) is a living resource to support students who are passionate about music. Learn about the diverse options available to them as they consider post-secondary steps. We invite students, educators, guidance counsellors, and parents to explore this resource dedicated to helping them imagine the possibilities. Learn more at The Music Pathways Project website
