Pre-Congress Seminar 4
How Music Helps: in music therapy and everyday life
― Exploring the 'how?' of music's help at micro, meso, and macro levels ―
Presenter
Gary Ansdell
UK
Nordoff Robbins (UK); University of Exeter
Description
Increasingly music therapists and others working musically with people are interested in the continuities between how music helps us all in everyday life, and how we mobilize music's help in 'specialist life'. The core of this interest is in the 'how?', the local craft of doing this work, and thinking professionally about it in ways that are more 'commonsense' - such that we can communicate more easily with clients, carers and fellow professionals. This presentation will explore the idea of a 'joined-up music therapy' that links micro and macro contexts through the idea of the 'meso' level of working. It draws from Nordoff Robbins, Community Music Therapy traditions, and 'commonsense' theory.