Brydie-Leigh Bartleet

Behind the Baton: Exploring Autoethnographic Writing in a Musical Context

In this article, the author considers how music can expand the creative possibilities of autoethnography. Likewise, the author explores how autoethnography can offer musicians a means to reflect on their creative work in culturally insightful ways. To “play out” these disciplinary considerations, the author crafts an autoethnographic narrative that centers on her own creative practice as a conductor. Moving between description and action, dialogue and introspection, the narrative reveals some of the complexities of reflecting and writing about music in this way. While this narrative is grounded in the author’s lived experiences, it reveals significant broader issues about the process of doing autoethnography, the conducting profession, and the culture and practice of music-making at large.

The nine domains of community music: Exploring the crossroads of formal and informal music education

While there have been many efforts to define community music, definitions have tended to be either too specific or too general to be of great use to practitioners. Much of the published research on the topic seems to be based on single projects, often conducted by the facilitators involved. While this has led to valuable contributions to understanding the scope and breadth of this field, it has done little to create perspectives that can be applied across the wide gamut of practices referred to as community music activities. Sound links, an extensive research project conducted in Australia with support from the Australian Research Council, has compared six divergent practices across the country with a consistent – principally ethnographic – methodology, yielding a wealth of insights into the working of this phenomenon. One of the key outcomes of the project is not a new definition of community music, but rather a framework that maps out the key ‘ingredients’ of successful practices across demographic, geographic, cultural, and contextual variations. These enable better understanding, planning, execution and evaluation of community music activities.

Implementing and Sustaining Higher Education Service-Learning Initiatives: Revisiting Young et al.'s Organizational Tactics.

Although the value of service-learning opportunities has long been aligned to student engagement, global citizenship, and employability, the rhetoric can be far removed from the reality of coordinating such activities within higher education. This article stems from arts-based service-learning initiatives with Indigenous communities in Australia. It highlights challenges encountered by the projects and the tactics used to overcome them. These are considered in relation to Young, Shinnar, Ackerman, Carruthers, and Young’s four tactics for starting and sustaining service-learning initiatives. The article explores the realities of service-learning initiatives that exist at the edge of institutional funding and rely on the commitment of key individuals. The research revises Young et al.’s four tactics and adds the fifth tactic of organizational commitment, which emerged as a distinct strategy used to prompt new commitment, enact existing commitment, and extend limited commitment at the organizational level.

Building vibrant school–community music collaborations: three case studies from Australia

This paper explores the relationship between school music and community music in Australia. While many Australian schools and community music activities tend to exist in relative isolation from one another, a range of unique school–community collaborations can be found throughout the country. Drawing on insights from Sound Links , one of Australias largest studies into community music, this paper explores three case studies of these unique school–community collaborations. These collaborations include a community-initiated collaboration, a school-initiated collaboration and a mutual collaboration. The author brings these collaborations to life for the reader through the words and experiences of their participants, and explores their structures, relationships, benefits, and educational and social outcomes. These descriptions feature important concepts, which could be transferred to a range of other cultural and educational settings in order to foster more vibrant school–community collaborations.

Sharing the podium: exploring the process of peer learning in professional conducting

We discuss a recent peer-learning project we undertook as co-conductors of the Young Conservatorium Wind Orchestra at Griffith University. Drawing on current educational theory on peer learning and material from our conducting practice and research, we explore how this approach offers professional conductors the opportunity to work together in an inclusive and empowering learning environment. We outline our peer learning context, the learning relationship we shared, the most significant musical outcomes of such a process, and the implications for conducting pedagogy and the professional development of conductors.

Exploring University-Community Partnerships in Arts-Based Service Learning with Australian First Peoples and Arts Organizations

In this chapter we focus on the importance of partnerships in arts-based service learning with Australian First Peoples and community arts organizations. Drawing on six years of our own partnership and a wide body of literature, this chapter aims to act as a trigger for further reflection on ways to engage in meaningful partnerships with First Peoples and arts organizations. In particular, the continuum between transactional and transformational types of relationships provides a useful means for understanding our work and for positioning the various benefits and challenges associated with university-community partnerships more broadly.

Friendship as research: Exploring the potential of sisterhood and personal relationships as the foundations of musicological and ethnographic fieldwork

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the individual music research projects the authors were working on in Borroloola, Northern Territory of Australia, and the ways in which the lived and inter‐subjective concepts of sisterhood and friendship strengthened the authors’ shared experiences in the field and became the foundations of their method.Design/methodology/approach – Through an auto‐ethnographic and inter‐subjective narrative approach, the authors consider how the intertwined notions of relationship as research and “friendship as method”, underpinned what was being researched, how the research was enacted, and finally how the authors came to further appreciate and understand the role that music‐making plays in facilitating this process.Findings – The authors’ independent and shared experiences during this research were stark reminders that it is indeed the quality of field relationships and friendships, rather than clever theoretical ideas or fancy methodological frameworks, which ultimat...

Enhancing intercultural engagement through service learning and music making with Indigenous communities in Australia

This article explores the potential for music making activities such as jamming, song writing, and performance to act as a medium for intercultural connection and relationship building during service learning programs with Indigenous communities in Australia. To set the context, the paper begins with an overview of current international perspectives on service learning and then moves towards a theoretical and practical discussion of how these processes, politics, and learning outcomes arise when intercultural engagement is used in service learning programs. The paper then extends this discussion to consider the ways in which shared music making can bring a sense of intercultural “proximity” that has the potential to evoke deep learning experiences for all involved in the service learning activity. These learning experiences arise from three different “facings” in the process of making music together: facing others together; facing each other; facing ourselves. In order to flesh out how these theoretical ideas work in practice, the article draws on insights and data from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University’s award winning Winanjjikari Service Learning Program, which has been running in partnership with Barkly Regional Arts and Winanjjikari Music Centre in Tennant Creek since 2009. This program involves annual service learning trips where university music students travel to Central Australia to work alongside Aboriginal and non-Indigenous musicians and artists on a range of community-led projects. By looking at the ways in which shared music making brings participants in this program “face to face”, we explore how this proximity leads to powerful learning experiences that foster mutual appreciation, relationship building, and intercultural reconciliation.

Arts-based service learning with Australian first peoples : concepts and considerations

In this introductory chapter we define some of the key concepts and considerations when engaging First Peoples in arts-based service learning. To do this we draw on a wide range of international literature. We then introduce the nation-wide Australian project that provided the groundwork, framework and inspiration for this edited volume. Lastly, we introduce the content and structure of the volume and outline each of the chapters’ key themes.

Reconceptualizing Sustainable Intercultural Partnerships in Arts-Based Service Learning

In this concluding chapter we argue that deep concepts of sustainability have the potential to reconceptualize service learning in higher education. These deep concepts include establishing relationships, sustaining those relationships, sustaining workers outside the university and sustaining transformation and radical hope within students and community members. In this chapter we suggest their successful adoption, however, requires a reconceptualization of sustainability in service learning.