Response by Jane Edwards to "More Music Therapy, More Music Therapists, More Health" by Diego Schapira
Thank you Diego for sharing the wonderful news of the Masters in Music Therapy in Cuba. I appreciate what difficult work it can be politically within a country but also within a university to start something new. I agree that it is wonderful for music therapy when new courses start and when new graduates emerge.
My experience in Brisbane at the University of Queensland many years ago now showed me how once there was a course, jobs could begin, programmes could develop and the professional association could burgeon. In my first there teaching the new undergraduate and postgraduate diploma programme in 1993 there were five music therapists (two were retired) in a region with a population of about 3 million. When I left 7 years later there were more than 30 music therapists working in Queensland; some of them in teams of two or three employees in a facility. There was also a state award for the payment of music therapists working in the health service. When I came to Ireland in 1999 after the Masters had been running for a year, I found a similar developing situation. Around 10 qualified music therapists were practicing, a small student cohort existed and there were great possibilities for development. Now there are two academic staff in the department running the MA, graduates are working all over the country, and this year our 36th graduate will emerge from the two year programme.
I can only say that from my experience the course will bring good things to Cuba and to Latin America. The graduates will enthuse and energise the profession of music therapy. Good luck in this endeavour and see you at the World Congress!
About Jane Edwards
Biography
PhD is an Associate Professor in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and has been the course director for their MA in Music Therapy programme since 1999. She is a qualified music therapist with clinical experience in providing music therapy for children who are ill in hospital. She is a Guest Professor at the Institute for Music Therapy at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany. She is widely published in the field of music therapy with many peer reviewed papers and chapters in a number of well received edited books such as Barbara Wheeler’s Music therapy research, 2nd edition, and Susan Hadley’s Feminist perspectives in music therapy for example. Her edited book Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts with contributions from authors in six countries was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2007. Currently she is on a sabbatical break; editing a book about music therapy in parent-infant programmes, and trying to finish reading Naomi Klein’s horrifying tome The shock doctrine (Penguin, 2007).