Layers and dynamics of social impact: Musicians’ perspectives on participatory music activities

An De Bisschop, Anemone Van Zijl

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Abstract

Participatory music activities designed to fulfil both artistic and social aims have become widespread across the world. Such activities are often linked to the generation of social impact. In the present research we explored musicians’ perspectives on the social impact of these activities. A total of 47 musicians with experience of leading participatory music activities in various settings in Belgium completed a survey; 21took part in follow-up, in-depth interviews. We used a constructive grounded-theory approach to analyse the data. The findings of previous research, typically exploring participants' perspectives, suggest that social impact should be understood as effects on participants that persist after the activity has taken place. Our findings suggest, by contrast, that musicians who lead participatory music activities conceptualise the social impact of their work as layered and dynamic: layered meaning that social impact can be situated on the level of the musicians’ intentions, the core aspects of their practice, and its effects on themselves as musicians, on participants, and on the wider society; dynamic meaning they see these layers as interacting with and influencing each other. These findings may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the
social impact of participatory music activities and have implications for practice, policy, and future research.
The research reported here was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/S005285/1) and co-funded by www.simm-platform.eu.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMusicae Scientiae
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Oct 2023

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