Arts-based service learning with First Peoples

What is it about?

This article explores the potential for music making activities such as jamming, song writing, and performance to act as a medium for intercultural connection and relationship building during service learning programs with Indigenous communities in Australia. To set the context, the paper begins with an overview of current international perspectives on service learning and then moves towards a theoretical and practical discussion of how these processes, politics, and learning outcomes arise when intercultural engagement is used in service learning programs. The paper then extends this discussion to consider the ways in which shared music making can bring a sense of intercultural “proximity” that has the potential to evoke deep learning experiences for all involved in the service learning activity. These learning experiences arise from three different “facings” in the process of making music together: facing others together; facing each other; facing ourselves.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

By looking at the ways in which shared music making brings participants in this program “face to face”, we explore how this proximity leads to powerful learning experiences that foster mutual appreciation, relationship building, and intercultural reconciliation.

Perspectives