Establishing a Relevant Code of Practice for Community Music Facilitators Working in Postcolonial Contexts

Abstract

Community music is a professional area that increasingly provides income for musicians trained as performers in the European classical music traditions. My School of Music, like many higher learning institutions around the world, are creating courses that provide professional development and training to performers wishing to become community music teachers and arts facilitators. When preparing conservatory trained performers to be effective community music facilitators in a (post)colonial context, the genealogical narrative of a European conservatory model can work in direct opposition to the celebration of local community’s music making. In this context European musical art objects can also act as public reminders of past historical trauma by supporting discourse that represents marginalised communities through the lens of the culture of power. While community music can sit uncomfortably in formal education, it provides the opportunity to unpack, reflect and transform a conventional music learning culture and its signature pedagogies. This paper describes the creation and transformation of a postgraduate research pedagogy course designed to support performance students planning to teach in the community. In this course we explore several indigenous concepts including historical trauma as frameworks for discussing public narratives and regazing at communities’ identities, all to support better facilitation of community music activities. Through this process we identified a code of practice that enables our graduating community arts educators to better address socio-political issues that are specific to our context but also equip those students with a set of competencies that are transferrable to other global regions and arts practices.

Key Words Community music, historical trauma, conservatory model, Māori, Indigenous, community arts education