Inspiring Minds seeks to broaden awareness and impact of graduate student research, while enhancing transferable skills. Students were challenged to describe their research, scholarship or creative activity in 150 or fewer words to share with our community.
Fiona Evison
PhD candidate, Don Wright Faculty of Music
Composing Music with Canadian Kids for Postpandemic Recovery
“Another one bites the dust!” The theme of Queen’s famous rock hit has been lived out soberingly within Canada’s postpandemic community music world. Years of restricted live singing has devastated the wellbeing of too many musical communities. Where I do my music education doctoral research, groups with vulnerable populations— elders and children—are struggling. Is there a musical solution? My research looks at the postpandemic restart of a community children’s choir in a resource-scarce Ontario region, asking: Could composing and performing their own music contribute to the well-being of both children and adult staff? I use my theory of relational composition and Seligman’s wellbeing PERMA model to examine Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment in new choral activities in which I have facilitated new songs to be presented in concert. With wellbeing evident in five key areas, this is one group that isn’t biting the dust!
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