Co-Becomings in Creative Music Workshop Practices

In this thesis, co-becomings are adopted as the starting point for understanding creative music workshop practices in the field of community music in the UK. Co-becomings take the place of individually situated humans as the basis for an understanding of subjectivity in this context that emphasizes embodiment, relationality and process. Drawing on posthuman theory, co-becomings are seen to cut across the nature-culture divide, incorporating both human and other-than-human dimensions including sound, technology and affect. The concept of co-becoming is put into dialogue with workshop practice in three diverse sites including an early years classroom, an online music making group for young autistic people and a music group for people with early onset dementia and their families. The inquiry is guided by areas of curiosity which include investigation of material encounters and emergent assemblages as well as methodological exploration and attention to my own co-becoming through the research. The study utilizes an emergent methodology involving diffractive encounters between data and theory, described as research-making. Playful approaches are developed to collaborate with human and other-than-human participants including data, generating a variety of audio, video and mixed media artefacts which are incorporated into the thesis. The thesis argues that foregrounding co-becomings helps to resist neoliberal narratives of individualism, standardisation and deficit which can limit the creative and aesthetic power of music workshop practices. Insight is offered into how utilizing co-becomings as the starting point for our understanding can align instead with fundamental values informing community music including co-creativity, process and inclusion. Implications for research and practice are suggested which include working with a diversity of different ways of knowing; recognition of dispersed and relational creative agency in a music workshop; and altered conceptions of both creativity and learning in this context.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Ursula Crickmay (21066386)

• community music
• posthumanism
• emergent methodology
• co-creativity
• music and autism
• music and young onset dementia
• music and early childhood

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2027-01-12

Identifier

10779/exe.31073140.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/31073140