we can all make music

making music makes us strong

Why singing together enhances community strengthening activities

It's an essential condition of community development that there be a safe public space in which people can gather to do things together that are enjoyable, engaging and sociable. People need, as a basis for productive social life, everyday ways of engaging with each other that are FUN. If people have a regular and everyday context in which to directly experience the pleasures of collaboration, how much more likely are they to be willing to socially engage in their daily lives?

Group singing is the simplest way to begin this journey. It can be a joyful experience with profound potential to enhance many individual and community capacities.

Society should actively encourage, facilitate and promote singing among its citizens and their children because:

making music together is the foundation of social connection;
music carries our culture - our memories, stories, identities, values and hopes;
when people lose their music they lose their voice, and often their sense of connection to the society they live in;
when people make music together they transcend the differences that divide; and,
through music we can restore the practices of the everyday arts that fulfil the basic human needs for free and creative expression, connectedness and participation - and music-making is an everyday art that does this, particularly in groups;

Making music together creates a crucible in which people can experience and productively channel the synergy that comes from collaborative effort. It provides an immediate and tangible manifestation of the power and joy of co-operation. It is the creative manifestation of community. It transforms the metaphor of harmony into a real life experience. It is always a creative act, in the moment - a practice of the 'everyday arts' as an integral part of ordinary people's daily lives.

Healthy and creative communities depend on there being regular opportunities for citizens and their children to come together in safe and supportive environments in which mutual respect and validation, co-operative interaction, creative stimulation and joyful outcomes are the normal conditions and result of engagement.

Community music making offers a highly productive context in which these conditions can be realised and where community vitality, capacity, confidence and energy can flourish. It can also create community where there was none and can engage the untrained in instant, positive experience that moves them from being spectators to participants.

Beyond the essential function of group music-making as a fundamental way of bringing people together in joy and harmony, there are heaps of ways it can be practically used. Here are just some of them:

Facilitating the creative expression and solution of problems
Stimulating inter-generational, inter-cultural and inter-gender dialogue
Imagining the future
Celebrating survival; bravely reflecting on loss and pain
Building and exploring identity
Reviving and focusing group dynamics (it can be used to pump energy and to relax)
Effective start and finish rituals
Communicating with others

Sing on, sing strong.

we can all make music

making music makes us strong

Why singing together enhances community strengthening activities

making a sound world together