Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

One of the things that I find very exciting about being a music therapist at this point in time and in my career is the opportunity that it allows for the exchange of ideas. I first became acutely aware of this in my life when I was preparing the first edition of the research book that I edited, Music Therapy Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives.

The process of getting this book together challenged me intellectually and personally, and I was frequently aware of and grateful for the immense intellectual stimulation that the process provided. This occurred when I interacted with authors, often telling them that I was not able to understand their writing (and thus wondered if readers would be able to do this) or, probably less frequent, challenging their statements. At times I did my own research, certainly for my own chapters but also to get information to move the content of other chapters forward. And always, there were interactions with others that facilitated these discussions.

I am now in the process of preparing the second edition of this book, this time to be titled Music Therapy Research, 2nd Edition. It is proving to be at least as stimulating as the first, although in many ways the stimulation and challenges are different. For one thing, this edition is much larger-we are anticipating 41 chapters compared with 24 in the first edition. The content is broader, with expansion of some of the areas included in the first, particularly the section on qualitative research, and the addition of other areas. In addition, the authors of the first edition represent many countries. Although I was certainly aware of the desirability of including international perspectives in the first edition, it was so difficult to draw the material together at that time that I still feel it would have been impossible to broaden it any more by including authors from countries outside of the U.S. But there was no doubt in my mind that, for this new edition, it was essential to have authors representing music therapy research in other countries. Although it is still not as inclusive as we might desire (there are no authors from Latin America or Asia, for instance; authors are from Europe, Australia, and the U.S.) it is much broader than the first edition. But this internationality has presented new challenges and, as I am writing about here, new opportunities for intellectual exchange or the exchange of ideas. Carolyn Kenny shared her perspective on this same process in "Collaboration is the Key" in Voices last year (2003).

I have had several other opportunities for this same process in the past year. I was fortunate to be invited to go to Aalborg University in Denmark as an Examiner for the PhD thesis of Felicity Baker (now Felicity Baker, PhD). This presented some of the same opportunities. Three of us were on Felicity's examination committee and the process of preparing the report prior to the thesis defense was stimulating as we shared our varying perspectives and developed a report on which we all agreed. Reviewing this thesis involved considerable research for me, as well, which then developed into my interactions with the others who were involved in the process and, of course, eventually for Felicity at her defense. In addition to the defense itself, the entire experience of being at Aalborg was stimulating, again involving the exchange of ideas.

Following that, I went to the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick as External Examiner for their MA in Music Therapy. Here I was privileged to read the work of the students in the program and to hear their case reports, as well as to interact with Vicky Abad, the Acting Director of the program, and others at the Irish World Music Centre. This was a different kind of intellectual exchange but, again, very stimulating.

Shortly after that, I went back to Europe to the European Music Therapy Conference in Jyväskylä, Finland. This was stimulating in a different way. The conference included some excellent presentations and the number of people at the conference was small enough that I was able to get to know many people whom I had not previously known as well as renew and deepen relationships with those whom I already knew. I find doing this in an international atmosphere to be extremely rewarding, largely because everyone does not think as I do and has not been trained as I have been.

As all of this has gone on, I have been working on preparing the 5th Annual Conference of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), of which I am Vice President and thus Conference Chair. The conference will be held in Austin, TX, from November 16-21. This has also been very stimulating. My goal has been to make the conference as stimulating as possible for people with varying interests and levels of knowledge of music therapy. I have had a lot of help planning the conference and think that we have managed to put together a conference that will stimulate those who attend and, hopefully, lead to opportunities for the exchange of ideas among those who attend. (People from all countries are, of course, welcome to attend the conference. Additional information is available at www.musictherapy.org. I encourage people who are not able to attend this conference to check that site for information on the next AMTA conference with a theme of "Experience the Power of Music Therapy!", to will be held November 18-20, 2005, in Orlando, FL. More information will be available in a few months.)

Even Ruud provided both the reason that these opportunities exist and a sense of what may come of them when he wrote:

I have learned from the community of music therapists how differently each has come to perceive reality and the nature of his or her work differently. I have learned that their outlook on life and their values and interests color their way of looking at the process of research, their way of pursuing a truth. As I have argued, however, there is no single truth, no single reality. Our profession will forever be populated with people and paradigms with competing claims of knowledge. The only answer is to learn from each other and communicate what we learn. (1998, p. 114)[1]

I could go on and on about the opportunities in my professional life for the exchange of ideas. As a university professor, I am, of course, in a position to both create and benefit from these opportunities. But I am sharing this in the hope that it will help others, particularly those who may not experience this in their professional lives, to do what they need to do to open up some similar opportunities for themselves.

I will suggest a few ways to make this happen for people who feel that this would be valuable in their lives. One thing that comes to my mind is to use this Voices site, not only to learn about the vast possibilities of music therapy that are talked about here, but also to get involved in the Discussions. When you write in response to another person's ideas and someone then writes back, you are participating in the exchange of ideas for yourselves and others. I also recommend reading Music Therapy World (www.musictherapyworld.net), which provides a different kind of opportunity for the exchange of ideas. These sites, of course, are available to anyone with internet access and do not require travel. Writing in response to articles in Voices, in addition, may feel possible for someone who is not yet ready to write for a journal.

This brings me to other ways to promote the exchange of ideas. Writing for journals puts one's ideas out so that others may respond to them. And as someone reads the journal-as people reading this column may-they may respond directly to the person (via letter or e-mail) or indirectly, by discussing the article with someone else. The Forum that is part of the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy (www.njmt.no) is set up to promote this type of exchange, although it is possible in other ways through other journals.

Of course, attending conferences is a wonderful way to promote the exchange of ideas. I have shared my ways of doing this above and encourage readers to work to make this work in their own lives. The World Congress of Music Therapy will be held in Brisbane, Australia, this summer and will be a great way for this to occur (see http://www.musictherapy2005.com/) but there are also opportunities through national conferences and more local events. Of course, the exchange of ideas is promoted through conferences in areas related to music therapy as well as music therapy itself.

I hope that my excitement about the exchange of ideas that is possible in music therapy will stimulate some readers to consider their own experiences with this. I look forward to possibly reading some thoughts and experience of this in the Voices discussions. And I hope that others will find their own ways to increase the exchange of ideas in their own lives.

Notes

[1] Thank you to Carolyn Kenny for making me aware of this particular paragraph in Even Ruud's book.

Reference

Kenny, Carolyn. Collaboration is the Key [online] Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. Retrieved October 23, 2004, from http://www.voices.no/columnist/colkenny290903.html

Ruud, Even. (1998). Music Therapy: Improvisation, Communication, and Culture. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.

How to cite this page

Wheeler, Barbara (2004). Exchanging Ideas in Music Therapy. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2004-exchanging-ideas-music-therapy