Project overview

Assessing and Enabling Musical Participation 

for Well-Being Impact across the Lifespan

In this Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Project, we test the growing belief that by investing in opportunities for musical participation we may develop the capacity to improve individual, family and community well-being, and thus strengthen Australia’s social fabric. The impetus for this ambitious project has been the research team’s own former investigations, with their combined disciplinary perspectives of music performance, music education, applied music therapy as well as social psychology research, offering powerful conceptual, theoretical and methodological strength.

       The team who have collaborated in different ways over the years (contributing to one another’s edited volumes, working on panels together) are well positioned to draw together and assess the diverse existing research, identify theoretical assumptions, and conceptualise and undertake effective new research to provide systematic and sufficiently wide-ranging evidence to make a large-scale and ground-breaking contribution on the well being potential of musical participation.

The project aims are:

i) To advance the knowledge base within music studies by generating theories and evidence about why we should invest in music-making in order to promote well-being;

ii) To undertake systematic investigations in order to identify specific variables that promote well-being in music activities;

iii) To develop best practice guidelines for music practitioners across a range of disciplines that will be disseminated widely using a variety of modalities and used to inform policy development.

       Music-making places considerable demands on the human central nervous system, with evidence pointing towards effects on brain plasticity occurring and being more pronounced in musicians than among those engaged in other skilled activities, especially among those who commence music participation earlier in life. Thus, there is evidence of a fundamental cognitive ‘benefit’ from investment in musical engagement. But, the types of impact we focus on in this application relate directly to positive health, defined by the World Health Organisation as: ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. So, as society looks for innovative, non-invasive, and economically viable interventions that embrace this contemporary definition of health proactively, we explore music’s great potential contribution to fulfil this urgent social need.

This project is funded by the Australian Research Council (DP140102679); however, the views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council or Universities.