In the past decade, learning to play instruments, as well as creating, recording, and sharing music, has changed dramatically with the advent of mobile devices such as intelligent cellphones and tablets, and social media sites such as YouTube. Digital technologies have transformed traditional forms of musical understanding through culturally relevant, participatory, and informal approaches to music learning. Young people are increasingly finding informal and participatory learning (IPL) approaches to be more engaging, relevant, and practically based than formal or traditional approaches to music learning. However, despite the growth of IPL within a large number of formal music education contexts in most European countries, in Canada and many other countries around the world, informal music learning approaches have made little impact on professional teaching practice. This is particularly the case at independent music schools outside the main school system, which tend to be dominated by western classical music traditions based on ‘conservatoire’ style or direct instruction approaches.
Phase 1 (2015-2016)
Music schools, teachers and researchers collaborate on CMPP development and implementation, meet with other project partners, identify students to participate.
Phase 2 (2016-2017)
CMPP takes place weekly at the students’ music school at no extra cost to parents (day/time TBA): • Apr–Jun (8 weeks) Unit 1: Playing by ear • Sept–Nov (8 weeks) Unit 2: Improvisation
• Jan–Mar (8 weeks) Unit 3: (Re)composing
Phase 3 (2017-2018)
Meet with all project partners to present and discuss the results of the project. An information package of teaching and learning materials will be produced and provided to music schools and teachers to assist with future programs.
The project received a grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) within the program “Partnership Development” to the amount of 199 941$.