Metell, Maren. 2023. Picturing musical accessibility: Co-creating music therapy with disabled children and their families. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This thesis reports research that explores group music-making with disabled children and their families, with a focus on how, when, and under what preconditions music becomes fully accessible and meaningful for everyone involved. Existing research has often focused on dimensions of disability and accessibility in relation to the individual child. In contrast, this study considers accessibility and meaning as distributed across whole families and groups of families and considers disabled children and their families as co-researchers in understanding such processes. The study draws on two projects which were informed by participatory action research, emancipatory disability research and ethnography - where doing music was both method and result. The first project took place in the home of a single family and focused on the process of collaborative knowledge development. The second project took the form of a music café, a weekly musical and social meeting space for neurodiverse families. Visual methods were used to document, analyse and represent the various practices involved in music making and tracing the trails of people, activities and objects. The drawn representations provide evidence of how accessibility and meaning is produced collaboratively by disabled children, their families, and a music therapist by showing the relationships between bodies and materials in context. Aligned with principles from community music therapy and anti-oppressive approaches, this thesis argues that music therapy with families can be considered as collaborative action. It challenges the view that the music therapist has sole expertise in facilitating accessible musical interaction. Thinking instead of music therapy as being distributed amongst all participants points to the importance of valuing shared expertise as well as noticing the contribution of material, sensorial and environmental factors. I suggest how ‘graphic music therapy’ could be an alternative way of understanding and representing the complex processes involved in co-creating music therapy.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00034028
Additional Information:	PhD awarded by Nordoff Robbins/Goldsmiths, University of London.
Keywords:	music therapy, disabled children, families, accessibility, drawings, participatory research
Date:	31 August 2023
Item ID:	34028
Date Deposited:	12 Sep 2023 13:44
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 11:40
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34028

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