Community Narratives
"Singing-In" Flourishing Communities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Trish Hensley
Can we "sing-in" flourishing communities – communities that are strong, that embrace difference, nurture creativity and foster care for each other? What does this mean? How can we do this? "Singing-in" is the notion that we can generate or find something through singing it. This ancient idea, one held by First Nations Australians long before Europeans arrived, is that singing can be an action that makes a difference. Singing is a generative form of communication, made all the more powerful as it combines language and music. Emile Durkheim’s formulation of collective effervescence (the energy that is created through collective activity); and Erving Goffman’s work on interaction rituals (the processes that build connections between people), provide an explanatory framework for the idea. The Tutti Choir is a mixed-ability choir that has been "singing-in" inclusion (that is, valuing diversity) since 1997. Adelaide Threshold Singers sing a cappella in groups of three or four at the bedsides of people who are dying, "singing-in" a peaceful transition to death. Based in her experiences with the Tutti Choir and Adelaide Threshold Singers, the author explores the concept of "singing-in," how it can be manifested, and why it should be actively encouraged to support flourishing communities.
Developing Community Music Therapy for Refugees through Action Research
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Jackson
Refugee and immigrant families entering the United States are often relocated to communities in which they are separated from their new neighbors by ethnicity, language, social customs, socio-economic status, and so forth. Communities often want to welcome and help them, but stark cultural differences can too easily lead to misunderstandings and fear. The children and adolescents in these families have a particularly difficult time adjusting to the social environment of school where they long to fit in with their same age peers but lack the language and social skills, while at the same time feeling guilt about “abandoning” their home country and needing support and therapy to cope with the trauma they have encountered in their lives. Refugee and immigrant adolescents in a small Midwest city in the U.S.A. provided the opportunity for stakeholders in the community to come together as a group and work towards finding ways that the arts, and particularly music, could play a role in facilitating the development of a community in which the kids feel welcomed and understood. Action research provided the perfect structure for meeting these challenges head on. This session will tell the story of the development of a community music therapy resource through the process of action research. Challenges and obstacles of working as a collaborative action research team will be described, as will the unexpected treasures that have been uncovered through the process. Benefits of the action research process will be discussed.
Neighbourliness in Action: Tate Exchange, Tate Neighbours and Affecting Change through Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cara Courage
The ethos of Tate Exchange is to bring art and society together in mutual creative enquiry. It is a space for space for everyone to make, play, talk, and reflect and to discover new perspectives on life, through art. As the only space of its type in the world, it is a site of new practice and knowledge for the art, museum and academic sectors. This paper will present Tate Exchange and its interplay between arts and society through the work of its current Lead Artist, Tania Bruguera. Bruguera’s work at Tate Exchange has focused on the convening and developmental support of Tate Neighbours, a group concerned with art as a catalyst for institutional and social change. Grounded in Bruguera’s "arte util" methodology, Tate Neighbours are comprised of residents and community leaders local to Tate Modern, in Southwark, London. They use the platform of Tate Exchange to affect institutional change as well as using the tools of art to affect social change in their neighbourhood, and through co-production with Tate Exchange’s public audience, the neighbourhoods of Tate’s visitors. This has resulted in Tate Modern’s Boiler House being renamed after a community leader (now, The Natalie Bell Building) and a sustained two-year programme of arts-led critical dialogue and activism within and without Tate. The paper will conclude with a series of key learning from this process and provocations to the arts and academic audiences about their own commitment to arts and social change.
Public Faces Unknown: Reimagining the Unidad Park Mural and Expanding Community Narratives
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Olivia Lafferty
In Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown lies a small community space, Unidad Park, and the largest Filipino-themed mural in the United States. This mural, “Filipino Americans: A Glorious History, A Golden Legacy,” spans 4,000 years of Filipino and FilAm history, highlighting significant events and historical figures who contributed to the awakening of Filipino national and political consciousness. While the mural identifies itself as fighting for the historical inclusion of “forgotten” or “invisible” Filipinos in American history, the artwork’s public presence is limited in accessibility and viewership--largely unknown to those outside its neighborhood. Further, the mural itself favors representations of male political/military leaders, echoing the dominant written and oral narratives available to Filipinos and the greater public. Drawing from recent research in Critical Filipino Studies, works by M. Evelina Galang, and stories from the Babaylan anthology, this paper examines both the limitations of “public” artwork and the possibilities for education, inspiration, and community-building it creates. Ultimately, the paper suggests ways that both critical and creative writing can afford the fuller admittance of peripheral narratives from their shadowed, private world into public worth.
