SOUND LINKS

Sound Links is a two-year ARC-funded project which looks closely at six demographically different

Soundlinks: Community Music in Australia

Australian communities to draw broader conclusions about the nature and scope of community music-making.

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SOUNDLINKS:

EXPLORING THE DYNAMICS OF MUSICAL COMMUNITIES IN AUSTRALIA, AND THEIR POTENTIAL FOR INFORMING COLLABORATION WITH MUSIC IN SCHOOLS

Brydie Leigh-Bartleet, Peter Dunbar-Hall, Richard Letts, Huib Schippers May 2009

This study was initiated by the MCA and carried out by the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre with an ARC grant. Linkage partners were MCA, the Australian Music Association and the Australian Society for Music Education.   It examines the musical life of six contrasting communities; working counter-clockwise: Albany, a small regional city in Western Australia; McLaren Vale, a regional town in a wine-growing area in South Australia in which it was already known that there was exemplary cooperation between music in a school and music in the community; Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne in Victoria, and specifically the operations of the also exemplary Dandenong Ranges Music Council; Fairfield, an ethnically mixed urban area in Sydney; Inala, a suburb of Brisbane where an indigenous music festival has made an impact on community life; and Borroloola, a remote indigenous community in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.   In a synthesis of the discoveries in an online survey, results from the MCA’s inaugural Music in Communities Awards, and the six case studies, the research team formulated “The Nine Domains of Community Music in Australia”, a sort of taxonomy of features that might be considered when investigating the musical life of communities or indeed, in designing a community music program or organisation.