Luc Nijs

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept ofeudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting).

In diverse interaction processes that characterize music experience, the human hand can be seen as a mediator and facilitator for the brain’s processing of musical expressive patterns. After a brief overview on the human expressive system for music, we consider gestures and hand articulations in music production and performance, focusing on hand dexterity and hand dystonia. Then, we discuss the role of the hand in music listening, conducting, and learning, showing that both in sound-generation and sound-accompaniment the hand mediates and facilitates action and perception in relation to musical expression. The recent use of technology in the domain of music is also considered throughout the chapter, with particular reference to sensing and motion technologies that allow users to control music parameters through hand–body movements. The hand can be considered as a co-articulated organ of the brain’s action–perception machinery. Therefore, future research on hand and music should adopt a multiperspective approach that integrates different disciplines, from motor control to music performance and expression theories.

The embodied music cognition research paradigm increasingly leads to findings that convincingly undergird the idea of the relationship between human movement and musical experience as a cornerstone of musical meaning formation and understanding. But even though movement is an integral part of early childhood music education, the findings and concepts from the embodied music cognition paradigm have not been fully embraced by researchers and practitioners working with young children. Yet, findings from embodied music cognition research might serve as valuable tools for practice and research. They can support early childhood practitioners in developing music learning activities that encourage children to shape their experiences of linking sound and movement in a meaningful and fulfilling way. They may provoke early childhood music researchers to address more fundamental questions and issues about learning music. Finally, the research domain of embodied music cognition is intrinsically linked to the use of sensing technologies and provides a context for researchers and practitioners to engage in fruitful collaborations that join theoretical, practical and empirical knowledge in the pursuit of technology-supported educational practices for young children. This chapter briefly describes the concept of an interactive technology that is currently under development and will also be implemented in early childhood education, namely Singewing Space. This interactive web-based application stimulates participatory sense-making and embodied learning through collaboratively creating a visualization of sound and movement in a shared virtual space.

In a newly designed collaborative online music course, four musical novices unknown to each other learned to play the clarinet starting from zero. Over the course of 12 lessons, a special emphasis was placed on creativity, mutual interaction, and bodily movement. Although addressing these dimensions might be particularly challenging in distance learning contexts, a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with the learners revealed how the teaching approach proposed has generally facilitated learning. Qualitative findings highlight the importance of establishing meaningful relationships with the musical instrument as well as with other students to build musicality, and of the interplay between creativity and control in individual and collective music-making activities. We suggest that remote music tuition with a small group can be a valuable resource to start learning music and that a creative, collaborative, and movement-based approach can contribute to musical growth.

Worldwide, children face adverse childhood experiences, being exposed to risks ranging from, exposure to political violence and forced migration over the deleterious effects of climate change, to unsafe cultural practices. As a consequence, children that seek refuge or migrate to European countries are extremely vulnerable, often struggling with integration in school, peer community, and their broader social circle. This multifaceted struggle can derive from external factors, such as the adaptation process and contact with other children, or internal factors such as the fears and trauma that every child carries within them since they departed from their homeland. To bounce, grow, connect, and create in both adversity and opportunity, children need to build resilience, i.e., the capacity of an individual to maintain stable psychological functioning throughout the course of adversity. On the one hand, building resilience requires developing a set of individual skills, such as self-control, emotion regulation, self-esteem, and agency. On the other hand, building resilience involves developing social skills, connection, and close relationships. In this theoretical contribution, we review and map existing research to argue that activities based on the combination of music and movement has a strong potential to intensively build resilience. First, we connect the concepts of resilience and eudaimonia, based on the protective factors and key components of resilience. Then we discuss how music and movement, separately, may contribute to building resilience. Next, drawing on the basic mechanisms of musical sense-making, we argue that through combining music and movement, children engage in empowering musical sense-making processes that support building resilience, and in this way, support them to grow together and deeply experience eudaimonic values such as self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem, personal autonomy, connection, belonging, and bonding. Finally, we connect theory to practice. Based on the presented theoretical elaborations and on the authors’ experience as practitioners, we propose a set of guiding principles for the design of movement-based musical activities that foster the internal and external factors necessary to build resilience.