Over recent years, in my various roles as music therapy practitioner, researcher and lecturer, I have engaged in considerable reflection on the concept of Community Music Therapy - what it might mean and how it might impact, if at all, on the practice of music therapy in New Zealand. Much has been written about Community Music Therapy (Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004b) and interesting philosophical, theoretical, and practical positions have been espoused. I do not intend to engage in further in-depth discussion or debate at the philosophical and/or theoretical level, but I am interested in thinking about how the ideas relate to music therapy practice in this country, particularly to special education which is a field I have a special interest in. In writing this column I draw on almost twenty years experience as a music therapy practitioner in the field; close involvement for the same amount of time supporting the development of music therapy in this country at a national level; informal interactions with colleagues; and my recent research which involved interviewing New Zealand music therapists to gain their views on a proposed music therapy protocol for collaborative consultation with teams who support students who have special education needs.
Naturally, I begin with context. Since the 1970's and over a period of two decades, a handful of music therapists who trained internationally (at a range of institutions including The Guildhall School of Music, Nordoff Robbins' Centres, Roehampton, Temple and Melbourne Universities) practiced music therapy in New Zealand and worked together to establish professional training in this country. Despairing of the time it was taking for a tertiary institution to set up a programme, the New Zealand Society for Music Therapy (NZSMT)[1] (after careful investigation and consideration for parity with other courses) instigated a Professional Accreditation of Music Therapists programme. Candidates for accreditation developed music skills and studied essential topics such as the psychology of music, human development, and Maori culture and music, with local universities or polytechnics. Music therapy topics were taught in block courses by invited international music therapists acclaimed for their expertise in specific areas. Music therapists were proud of the eclectic nature of this programme, and the variety of knowledge and expertise that could be shared within our local music therapy community. The accreditation programme ceased in 1997 as expectations that a tertiary training course was imminent, grew. The Master of Music Therapy Programme was indeed established at Massey University[2], Wellington, in 2003 and continues in this eclectic tradition with significant input from Australian, American, British, and New Zealand music therapists to date.
I entered the NZSMT accreditation programme in the early 1980s with a particular interest in working with children who have special education needs, and was already employed as a musician in special schools. From my description of the programme, you will note that I was not strongly schooled in any particular theoretical model of music therapy. Naturally, I found that particular approaches to music therapy resonated with me for a variety of reasons but the most important factor was the relevance of the theory to the work I was doing. Clive and Carol Robbins were significant contributors to my training and I embraced the Creative Music Therapy approach and the humanistic framework.
However, in my (later) work with adolescents who had social and emotional difficulties I drew considerably on psychoanalytical theory. Nevertheless the work, i.e. the needs of the clients in context, always led the way. Further, pioneers do not have the luxury of working, or perhaps the burden of needing to work, within established ways. We do not, and neither to our government agencies, institutions, families/whanau and clients, have strongly held preconceived ideas about what music therapy is. We begin by building relationships with the aforementioned groups and then set out to determine what it is that we can offer each other. The way we define music therapy changes with each new encounter.
For example, I am personally drawn to work with children who have multiple disabilities and with whom music therapy improvisation (usually shared in clinical settings) is often a primary mode of communication. Nevertheless, I have had to use a variety of approaches and quite different words to explain what I can offer, in order to obtain access to clients in various settings. It has sometimes been necessary to promote activities that I might have considered to be on the fringe of music therapy practice, in order to gain access to facilities to undertake the real work. In some instances, being a musician in residence enabled me to earn the trust and respect of principals, teachers, psychologists and other therapy colleagues who then gave me opportunities to develop more individual and group music therapy programmes.
Over time, as schools found therapeutic space, music rooms were fitted with appropriate equipment, boundaried clinical work was able to be undertaken and the traditional practice of music therapy in special education settings was witnessed and increasingly valued. Music therapy was naturally predominantly offered in special school or units, where students with special learning needs were educated together, and where funds individually targeted to student need (the Ongoing Reviewable Resource Scheme, or ORRS, funds) could be pooled and used to employ allied health staff including music therapists. The request for individual or group music therapy programmes for students continues to increase. However, over the last fifteen years as families and educators have more readily embrace the philosophy of inclusion, when one begins a programme of clinical work with an individual child in a school setting, the work also usually widens from a clinical focus, at least in time, in an effort to support the child's integration in the school and other relevant communities. Further, in recent years as music therapy's reputation has grown, requests for music therapy programmes for students who do not attend special schools is rapidly increasing. In these cases, there is usually no therapeutic space available in the school and educators and families have little idea about how the music therapist might begin the work. New ways of working need to be developed.
So regardless of whether a facility began by primarily valuing my skills as a musician who could facilitate therapeutic change with individuals, groups, or within the school milieu; or whether they begin by primarily valuing clinical music therapy; my work within school settings has included all the possibilities (individual music therapy, group music therapy, workshops, performances, concerts and trips, music for special events, learning instruments and participation in ensembles) outlined in Wood's Matrix (in Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004). Families and other important people in client's lives have been invited to participate, and the work was often interdisciplinary in nature. Was it always Community Music Therapy?
Perhaps the influence of Maori (Tangata Whenua – the people of the land) has contributed to New Zealanders having a rather natural eagerness to work within communities. The Maori people have given us a holistic concept for health which looks to physical, emotional, spiritual and whanau (wider family) wellbeing. While a longstanding definition for music therapy in New Zealand has simply been "the planned use of music to meet identified need", there are many intrinsic assumptions that go with this simple definition. Specifically we understand that a trained music therapist will plan and use the music with clients; that the music might be recorded, live, improvised, composed or precomposed; that being together in music facilitates the development of a therapeutic relationship; and that identified need includes our clients' specific difficulties in relation to the communities in which they live.
New Zealand music therapy students are still predominantly entering placements at facilities where no music therapist has been before, and the work is little understood. As Clinical Programme Coordinator I have noted that facilities, almost without exception, are very enthusiastic about accommodating a music therapy student. As Pavlicevic noted (2005) there is often an implicit understanding that doing music is a good thing. Even after receiving considerable pre-placement education the facilities who eagerly accept students have extremely diverse expectations of what having a student might involve. So, regardless of the population involved, the supporting music therapists, and the music therapy students, go and work with the facilities, musicking in mutually agreed beneficial ways with that community. They learn about clients and caregivers and the communities in which they live, learn, and work, and how these people respond to music. This is a systemic way of working. The students have often entered the community before they are able to determine where their time and skills will be most productively employed. One of their main initial goals can be for facility staff to learn about the possibilities of clinical work for clients, and to educate other professionals about appropriate music therapy referrals.
This leads me to a training issue. Inexperienced students or therapists who embrace an eclectic approach are likely to have difficulty developing the necessary frame for each musical situation they encounter. They need to ask "on what theoretical assumptions do I base the work?" They debate with themselves and others "what can I offer that a musician cannot?" They struggle with the questions posed by Ansdell (2002) "who am I as a Music Therapist? What are the limits to this work?" They need to explore various musicking possibilities inherent to the facilities and situate each piece of work within a congruent theoretical framework. The frameworks might not have to come from existing music therapy or psychotherapeutic literature. But is clinical music therapy still at the core of our practice? It seems that music therapists or music therapy students need knowledge, skill and experience in a particular way – an acknowledged starting point – before they can explore and describe what is different. Theoretical frames give us safety and security and it is what falls out of the frame that is interesting and gives us something new to work with (Gray, 1994).
Ansdell describes an international history of community music and music therapy divergence and convergence. It seems that New Zealand music therapists, and perhaps others, might also experience this divergence and convergence on an individual level. For example, I believe I explored community musicking before and alongside my music therapy training, but needed to consciously leave that behind during training and the first years after I qualified in order to find myself and my particular frame, as a music therapist. When I felt established, comfortable and secure that my particular theoretical frame/s could situate my practice in the facilities in which I worked, I was able to use this knowledge and experience to engage easily and safely to return to the wider occupation of musicking in therapeutic communities. I may have felt like a rule-breaker as others have (Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004a) but the rules provided another context for my reflections.
I wonder if we have paid enough attention to the fact that it is the skilled and experienced clinicians, researchers and authors who are engaged in the community music therapy debate. Stige (2004) suggests that community music therapy may be understood as a set of responses to challenges given by contemporary developments in society and culture, such as individualisation, specialisation, and professionalisation. He sees the role of clients and music therapists in relation to each other and to society at large being negotiated in new ways and within new contexts. Those of us who have already established professional roles, are experienced and respected, can move in new directions. We are invited, because of our hard earned reputations to do music with people as well as to take on clinical music therapy clients. When students or inexperienced music therapists do music with people they need to also be developing their expertise as music therapy clinicians.
While I agree that definitions can be restricting, I am also aware that it is essential that we continue to strive to articulate clearly who we are, what it is that we do and how it differs from what others do. It is difficult if not impossible to distinguish the work of a professional who understands the needs of our clients (for example the teacher trained to work with special needs children who is also an accomplished and flexible musician), with that of a music therapist who works in the same field. Using the special education example (and playing the devil's advocate), it may be that the luxury of working with a child individually with appropriate equipment in a quiet physical environment, rather than with peers in a noisy classroom, are primary factors that enable the music therapist to facilitate change more readily than the teacher.
In a review of the goals and strategies used by music therapists working with students with severe disabilities and the purported outcomes of music therapy, Stephenson (2006) suggests that the successful use of music as described in the literature would not appear to require a music therapist. Perhaps the specialist teacher who also has good quality flexible musicianship is rare, and so the need for music therapists remains. However, I believe our psychotherapeutic understandings also provide a point of difference and I agree with Ansdell's (2002) statement that "ultimately it is the skill, training, and experience of the Music Therapist and the supporting structures of the profession which will ensure safe practice – however music therapy is defined". Nevertheless interviews with New Zealand music therapists suggest we might be at risk of becoming precious or defensive of our profession and this would not be helpful. Acknowledgement, appreciation of, and collaboration with community musicians is natural, right and proper. Do we have frames strong enough to hold our profession steady?
Ansdell (2002) was quite right to assume that music therapists were wondering whether their work was really Music Therapy. My PhD study has involved action research, collaborating with special education teams in their education facilities to empower them to use music therapeutically in a sustainable way. Despite my earlier argument that New Zealanders do not really have preconceived ideas about what music therapy is, I was initially uncomfortable as I explored the literature looking for a contextual home for the work. While I was more than comfortable with the project itself, I found myself exploring various music therapy definitions and wanting to argue that the work was legitimate because I would be depending on the therapeutic relationship that developed between me (the trained therapist), a client, and the music in order to come to know each of the individual students I would be working with. Naturally I became increasing comfortable situating the work within the community music therapy literature – it is music centred, took place in the contexts and environment in which the students live, and was responsive to the school and classroom culture and to the needs of special education teams. I recognised the value of being able to take music therapy values and approaches into the community (Ansdell, 2002). Nevertheless I find it interesting that I was initially reluctant to define it as Community Music Therapy – it is, as Pavlicivec has explained, just what we do.
[1] Now known as Music Therapy New Zealand.
[2] The music schools of Massey and Victoria Universities joined together in 2004 to form the New Zealand School of Music.
Ansdell, G. (2002). Community Music Therapy and the Winds of Change. [online]. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, Retrieved August 4, 2005 from http://www.voices.no/mainissues/Voices2(2)ansdell.html.
Pavlicevic, M. & Ansdell, G. (2004a). Afterword. In M. Pavlicevic & G. Ansdell (Eds.), Community Music Therapy (pp. 298-303). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Stephenson, J. (2006). Music therapy in the education of students with severe disabilities. Education and training in developmental disabilities, 41(3), 290-299.
http://www.voices.no/discussions/discm4_05.html.
Rickson, Daphne (2009). Community Music Therapy in New Music Therapy Communities. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=colrickson230309