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

I would like to share with you some thoughts I have had lately on the value of striving for the unattainable. I could start by quoting the motto of the Norwegian Association for Mentally Challenged People: "Community for Everybody."[1] It is such a natural claim but seems to be rather impossible to attain. In other words; it may be the most valuable aim.

Since 1988 the university college where I work has collaborated with the regional division of the Norwegian Association for Mentally Challenged People in arranging an annual Cultural Festival. Music therapists, students, dancers, artists and other professionals spend 48 intense hours together with a group of almost 100 enthusiastic people with cognitive problems but cultural resources. During the 16 years that the festival has lived it has grown strong and it is now a cultural event and a happening that many of the participants consider to be the highlight of the year.

For several years I was co-arranging this festival, but the last few years I have not been part of it, due to a research scholarship I had. This spring I again found myself involved, and after two days of singing and dancing, listening and performing, eating and drinking, I realized that this festival was something I had missed a lot. While I was there, I enjoyed it intensely. I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the participants and the courage and curiosity of the students; experimenting with instruments, activities and evolving strategies for participation. I was also fascinated by the fact that through musicking in groups some of the participants were able to reclaim skills and memories of previous festivals, activities and relationships. The students played Norwegian folk tunes, international pop-tunes, or improvised pop-up tunes. The participants sang along, created rhythms and counter-rhythms, danced and dramatized. It was all so full of energy, humor and emotion, but not without limitations and frustrations. In short, it was a living and evolving event.

After the festival I found myself reflecting about how the current status of the event relates to the goals we defined when we established the festival back in 1988 (Malmros & Stige, 2004). I realized that some of our goals had been realized and that others were not. 16 years ago we hoped that the festival could become an arena where mentally challenged people could come together, share cultural experiences, and have a nice time. It seems that this goal has been attainable; quite a few of the participants seem to have a splendid time every festival. But we also had a second goal; we hoped that the festival could play a role in stimulating musicians and educators throughout the county to take a more active role in the development of cultural and social welfare for mentally challenged people. I am not so sure that this goal has been achieved and I am starting to wonder about its attainability.

In 1988, when we established the festival, there was a strong wind blowing in Norway, in favor of favoring mentally challenged people. The country was in the middle of an intense process of closing down institutions with the goal of developing more inclusive communities where people with mental handicaps and problems could find their valued place. But things have changed. Looking back, we can see that the material conditions have become relatively satisfying; most mentally challenged people now live in decent private flats instead of in large inhumane institutions. These people now live in our community, but do they experience community? I am not so sure. There is little research to guide our judgment in relation to this, but my impression is that quite a few of these people are lonely, sometimes even lonelier than before, since they live in local communities but have limited access to leisure activities. In 1988 we hoped that the annual Cultural Festival could inspire the local community music schools[2] to take action, but the cultural developments the last decade seem to have been going in a different direction. Quite a few of the schools increasingly concentrate on the most talented pupils, instead of focusing upon how to develop inclusive milieus. In short, this development means that while the Cultural Festival seems to represent an inclusive oasis where the participants may perform their identity[3] they will quite often experience severe problems of access to communities of practice in the municipalities where they live (cf. Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Realizing this, I must say I feel a deep respect for the parents and "fighters" that keep organizations such as the Association for Mentally Challenged People going, with unattainable goals such as community for everybody and a society for all. They seem to be tireless, even though the situation at times seems hopeless. In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus (1942/2000, p. 111) wrote "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." He could be right. Unattainable goals may at times be our most important goals, when they represent the values that we value the most.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Barbara Wheeler for language feedback on this column.

References

Camus, Albert (1942/2000). The Myth of Sisyphus. London: Penguin.

Lave, Jean & Etienne Wenger (1991). Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Malmros, Hilde & Brynjulf Stige (2004). Kulturfestival som samfunn for alle? [A Cultural Festival as Society for Everybody?]. Musikkterapi, 2004, No. 3.

Notes

[1] The Norwegian word for community used in the motto could have multiple meanings, so that the motto could also be translated to: "A Society for All."

[2] These schools are public leisure time educational activities and should be accessible for all, since they are paid by the municipalities.

[3] With the expression to "perform their identity" I am not only thinking about the performance of who they are, but also of who they want to be.

How to cite this page

Stige, Brynjulf (2004). Striving for the Unattainable. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2004-striving-unattainable