Co-Becomings: Monday Afternoons

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Co-Becomings in Creative Music Workshop Practices: Monday Afternoons

• IRAS ID

  294208

• Contact name

  Ursula Crickmay

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Exeter

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  The research is part of a PhD study investigating music workshop practice, looking at how people think about themselves and their music making in this work. It includes musicians and the different groups of people they make music with. This application is for one part of that study, including the Monday Afternoons group in which some participants have dementia.
  Creative work in schools, communities, hospitals and other sites off the concert platform forms a significant strand of many professional musicians’ working lives. The question of how musicians perceive themselves when working in these diverse settings is a topic that has been given little attention in the literature (Ascenso, 2016), and yet may have significance for musicians’ wellbeing (Gross & Musgrave, 2017), for the quality of work they produce (Renshaw 2013), and so for the quality of experience for participants.
  A wealth of research evidences the benefits of music for people with dementia (Clare & Camic, 2019), making the development of music practice particularly relevant to this group. My proposal focusses on participatory, embodied and collective practices, enabling this user group to have a voice in how expertise develops.
  I am working on an area of theory called new materialism and the main focus of the study is to bring music workshop practices and new materialist theory into dialogue to explore the idea of co-becoming.
  The purpose of the research is to gain more understanding of music workshop practice so that we can support musicians who are involved and better develop the experience of workshop participants.
  Participants will be invited from an ongoing group who improvise and make music together, currently meeting online. It will include participation, collecting video and audio recordings, and utilising secondary data including music, covering a period of up to 8 months.

• REC name

  North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  21/NE/0133

• Date of REC Opinion

  28 Jul 2021

• REC opinion

  Unfavourable Opinion