Specialisms & Contexts - MUS00112M

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  • Department: Music
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2025-26

Module summary

Community Musicians work across a wide range of settings, often with very different priorities, expectations, routines and challenges. This module introduces several key contexts of community music practice and equips you with an understanding of how to work creatively, appropriately and successfully within them.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

During this module, you will be introduced to a wide range of settings, including: prisons and detention centres, hospitals and care settings, different school settings, amateur ensembles, and others. The module will also focus on a variety of specialisms relevant to the field of community music, including: music therapy, working with older populations and dementia, working with families, using trauma-informed approaches, working sensitively with mental health, understanding D/deaf/F musicianship, and more. Practical experiences will be linked to relevant research and theoretical models.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module you should be able to:

  • Differentiate between general knowledge and specialist knowledge in community music;

  • Develop project/workshop/lesson plans in response to the needs, opportunities and limitations of at least one of the above contexts or areas of specialism;

  • Adapt activities and delivery approaches to a variety of settings and evaluate the effectiveness of adaptations;

  • Communicate with partners and participants across a range of settings;

  • Engage with academic research and examples of practice within a chosen area of focus, reflecting critically on the connections between theory and practice.

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

One of the following, to form 100% of the module assessment:

  • 2000-word workshop or lesson plan with contextual annotations/commentary

  • 3000-word essay

Alternative options for those with relevant prior experience, with the approval of module leader only, and subject to availability of examiners for any live element:

  • 3000-word evidence-based project proposal

  • 3000-word workshop evaluation based on observation

  • Practical workshop and 1000-word contextual commentary

  • Performance linked to a chosen community music context or specialism, accompanied by 1000-word contextual commentary

  • Composition/arrangement linked to a chosen community music context or specialism (scores/instructions/recordings as appropriate to the type of composition), accompanied by 1000-word contextual commentary

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

You will receive written feedback inline with standard University turnaround times.

Indicative reading

Ansdell, Gary, and Merce´de`s Pavlicevic, eds. 2004. Community Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Gouk, Penelope, James Gordon Kennaway, Jacomien Prins, and Wiebke Thorma¨hlen, eds. 2018. The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind and Well-Being. London: Routledge.

Henley, Jennie, and Mary L Cohen. 2018. ‘Music-Making Behind Bars: The Many Dimensions of Community Music in Prisons’. In The Oxford Handbook of Community Music, edited by Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Lee Higgins, 153–72. Oxford University Press.

Hess, Juliet. 2019. Music Education for Social Change: Constructing an Activist Music Education. New York, London: Routledge.

Hoover, Sarah Adams. 2021. Music as Care: Artistry in the Hospital Environment. London: Routledge.

Howe, Blake, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil William Lerner, and Joseph Nathan Straus, eds. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jorgensen, Estelle et al., eds. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Paynter, John. 2008. Thinking and Making: Selections from the Writings of John Paynter on Music in Education. Edited by Janet Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.

Spiro, Neta and Katie Rose Sanfilippo. 2022. Collaborative Insights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Care throughout the Life Course. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Turino, Thomas. 2008. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.