Piloting an Emerging Model for Community Music Education in the Time of COVID-19

Piloting an Emerging Model for Community Music Education in the Time of COVID-19 is a collaborative, community-engaged research-creation project that builds on existing relationships to establish a new partnership to respond in a crucial and timely manner to needs expressed by Black and Indigenous groups in Canada and Mali, people whose daily challenges resulting from histories of racism and colonialism are now exponentially compounded by COVID-19. Our goal is in 2 parts: (1) challenge systemic racism and inequalities in music education through collaborative research that serves Black and Indigenous communities and musics; (2) establish a new operating model to foster the growth and long-term viability of Association Foli-Lakana, our not-for-profit partner (their mission is to facilitate the vitality of musics, youth, and communities in Bamako, Mali). Our project leverages resources and infrastructure contributed by multiple stakeholders and brings together, as co-researchers, members of Foli-Lakana with leading community music education scholars and ethnomusicologists who specialize in applied, practice-based research; youth and educators in organizations that serve African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw youth; as well as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. We are supported by CBU’s Centre for Sound Communities, an arts-led social innovation lab whose Director, Ostashewski, has been collaborating with Malian, African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw community-based team members since 2014. Our project will result in multiple concrete academic and non-academic outcomes (a new music education model and accompanying learning resources, academic conference paper, journal article) to support recovery and resilience in the face of the pandemic, for all participants.

Faculty Supervisor:

Marcia Ostashewski

Student:

Partner:

Boys and Girls Club of Cape Breton

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Cape Breton University

Program: