Motivation og læring i musikalske outreach projekter

Hvorfor laver vi egentlig musikalske inklusionsprojekter? En undersøgelse af forholdet mellem ’systemerne’ og ’musikeringen’.

Karsten Aaholm, docent

Karsten Aaholm har i 2017 skrevet speciale i Antropologisk Pædagogik med titlen ”Det, jeg har brug for nu, er at vi drømmer lidt igen” – En undersøgelse af forholdet mellem ’systemerne’ og ’musikeringen’ i et El Sistema-inspireret musikprojekt for minoritetsbørn.

Specialet bygger på feltstudier, og Aaholm analyserer og vurderer forskellige vinkler og begrundelser for såkaldte outreach projekter:

• Hvordan begrundes og evalueres de, og hvilke interesser er involveret?
• Og ikke mindst: virker de?

Se Aaholms slides fra hans præsentation på DJM’s Mini-konference 2017 og læs hans speciale fra maj 2017.

Nedenfor kan læses Aaholms resumé af specialet (på engelsk).

Summary of associate professor Karsten Aaholm’s research in outreach projects

What I need now is that we start dreaming again – An investigation of the relation between the ‘systems’ and the ‘musicking’ in an El Sistema-inspired musical project for minority children.

2016-17 thesis
My work, resulting in the thesis delivered to Anthropology of Education, University of Aarhus is based on three months of anthropological fieldwork at ‘MusikProjektet’ (a pseudonym), at a school in the western part of Aarhus. The project is a musical outreach project, aiming at integrating children with a non-Danish background, who are normally considered to be socially and culturally weak, into the Danish society.

MusikProjektet is inspired by the Venezuelan El Sistema, a musical pedagogical system, offering the children free access to instruments and music lessons in groups, leading up to live concerts together with other El Sistema orchestras. The thesis examines – leaning on Professor Frede V. Nielsen’s definitions of the reasons for teaching music – the understandings and conceptualization of this particular music pedagogical project, but also the wider system and the different agendas surrounding it, from the actual teachers to the musical and governmental institutions leading up to the main question: In a project with voluntary music education for children from an ethnic minority, what role does the musical understanding (the musical discourse), as well as the agendas and the different interests of the teachers and the institutions in question (the state, the local authorities, the school and El Sistema), play for the motivation of the children to start and continue playing music? Also, which interests do the children have socially, personally and ethnically?

This interest and research led to locating two musical ‘battlefields’: one where the agenda of the different institutions seem to obstruct ‘MusikProjektet’ from fulfilling their initial goals of being an alternative to school and social obligations. And another, where the inherent pressure from the distinct ideology and format of El Sistema (in the local translation) seemed to prohibit the teachers from finding the specific pedagogical tools and formats that would suit the children in question and their individual needs best.

In this conclusion it seems that the connection to El Sistema is double-sided: It is – on the positive side – both an inspiration, motivation and an argument for funding and – on the negative side – a source of pressure and a limitation in the tools that the teachers can use locally to keep the children interested and developing musically. Finally the thesis suggests that a productive way of discussing these dilemmas would be to stretch the different musical understandings with the concept of ‘musicking’, originally presented by music anthropologist Christopher Small, focusing not only on the particular music played, but also on the musical practice, where the non-formal musical activities and musical identities of the children are valued and integrated in the musical pedagogical project.