Thinking Community Music

Thinking Community Music explores critical questions concerning community music practice and theory with emphasis on intervention, hospitality, pedagogy, social justice, inclusion, cultural democracy, music, research, and future possibilities. The book encourages questioning, reflection, and dialogue. Shaped as provocations and presented as eight stand-alone essays, each ’think piece’ comprises of critical questions, concrete illustrations of practice, theoretical explorations, and reflective discussion. Flanked by a historical map and a closing statement, the book provides a springboard for conceptual interrogation about participatory music-making. Supported by the lineage of poststructural philosophy, ideas emulating from Derrida and Deleuze frames conceptual interrogation about community music practices and the broader parameters of social-cultural music-making and music teaching and learning. As a vital part of the music ecology, community music is a distinctive field and a critical lens to view other musical practices and the various political and cultural policies that frame them.

Lee Higgins is the Director of the International Centre for Community Music based at York St. John University, UK. He has experience across education and health sectors, prison and probation services, youth and community, adult education, and arts organizations. As a presenter and guest speaker, he has worked on four continents in university, school, and NGO settings and was the President of International Society of Music Education from 2016 to 2018. He was the senior editor for the International Journal of Community Music (2007-2021) and author of Community Music: In Theory and in Practice (2012, Oxford University Press), co-author of Engaging in Community Music (2017, Routledge) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018).