What is the role of Higher Education in music for health initiatives?
Wednesday 2nd March 2022, 1:15pm - 2:15pm
Arts for health and wellbeing research, policy and practice has been expanding globally in recent years. In the UK, this is particularly apparent since the landmark report Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing was launched in 2017. Since then, the introduction of Social Prescribing, Arts on Prescription and Creative Referrals have brought arts for health and wellbeing into the mainstream of the UK health system (or National Health Service, NHS), with music as one of the most popular art forms involved. Yet questions around quality of experience and equity of access are lingering just below the surface of this expansion. In this webinar we hear from an experienced UK artist who has increasingly been working within and engaging with the health and Higher Education systems in the North West of England and a colleague from the University of Texas San Antonio who is at the initial stages of their music for health ambitions. Together we will encounter and explore these issues to consider in what radical ways Higher Education could take a greater role in music for health initiatives?
This webinar will be chaired by Victoria Hume, Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance.
Speakers
Ros Hawley
Ros Hawley is a specialist healthcare musician interested in exploring the processes of musical interaction used in her work with children and young people with complex healthcare and communication needs, their families and staff, in hospital settings. She collaborates with her long-term music partner Mark Fisher, who has lived experience of hospitalisation; together they use their experiences of musical interaction to inform educational programmes with music, nursing and medical students. Ros has written a reflexive PhD on her work as a musician in hospital, Music-making in a Paediatric Hospital: A Reflexive Study of Musician Practice. (www.songbirdsmusic.uk)
Tracy Cowden
Tracy Cowden is the Roland K. Blumberg Endowed Professor in Music and Chair of the Department of Music at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). As a pianist, her recent work includes performing in health care settings in person and virtually, teaching music in health courses, and facilitating interdisciplinary research regarding music and health; she is a member of the Brain Health Consortium at UTSA. Dr. Cowden is an active advocate for arts in health and is developing multiple interdisciplinary projects to study how adult music learning impacts health and wellbeing.