Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
LARC - Leeds Arts Research Centre
Cohesive Harmonies is a curated programme of experimental music interventions that are co-created with non-academic partners in the form of community music workshops. Each intervention seeks to explore how place-based music activities can build non-musical competencies contributing towards active citizenship.
Cohesive Harmonies is a curated programme of experimental music interventions that are co-created with non-academic partners in the form of community music workshops. Each intervention seeks to explore how place-based music activities can build non-musical competencies contributing towards active citizenship. The approach of co-creation enables musical interventions to address issues at the heart of communities. Moreover, it suggests how music outreach research, in collaboration with local community music practitioners, advocates for and expands the reach of their activities, resulting in demonstrable impact within their specific localities. Ultimately, my research demonstrates how grassroots music activities can contribute to bolstering local engagement, cohesion, and building healthy communities.
Cohesive Harmonies features two different kinds of interventions. Firstly, Researcher-Driven Interventions, which involve a local organisation, but are conceived by the researcher (myself) to experiment with particular musical approaches. These projects are primarily situated in Bradford (West Yorkshire) and include Virtual Harmonies an interfaith songwriting workshop series; and The Bradford Dhol Project – cross-cultural drumming workshops. Secondly, Organization-Driven Initiatives, which involve collaboration with non-academic entities where initiatives are created within their existing frameworks to accomplish specific organisational goals. These projects include collaborations with Octagon (Dorset and Somerset music service) to deliver music training to Educational Learning Support Assistants; and SoundWave (in West Cumbria) to advocate for music as part of the region’s de-industrialisation strategy.
Dunn adds: “This has been an incredibly humbling, revealing and unexpectedly enjoyable research project. ‘The Jingle Book’ brings together these experiments with tongue twisters that became a real linguistic leveller between artist, staff and residents and led to Belong wondering whether regular use might improve fluency. The book is both a toolkit and a catalogue, with contributions from our own Dementia Research Centre and some undergraduate Fine Art students, offering tongue twister activities to test out that include the non-verbal, new ones written by a 6-year-old, shorthand, Braille, BSL and even edible. The book comes in a frosted envelope to reference the fog that many people living with dementia describe but once inside, it’s full of colour and tactile surfaces and surprises.”
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