Musical Development and Positive Identity Change

Dr. Jennie Henley's article discussing musical development and positive identity change in prisoners and young offenders (drawing on Good Vibrations in the UK, the Oakdale Prison Choir in the US and the Casa da Musica programme in Portugal) has been published on the EU Access to Culture Platform.

Dr. Jennie Henley from The Institue of Education spent a week taking part in a Gamelan Music course run by the national charity, Good Vibrations, in an English Youth Offennding Institution (YOI). As well as immersing herself in the experience as a participant, and drawing on her own music teaching experience, Jennie wrote a piece of qualitative research on the project.

This research http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14613808.2014.933791 centres on how developing musical skills, develops other positive attributes in parallel, such as positive self-identity; attributes that can contributte to the journey towards desistance from crime.

One of the participants on the project said, ‘If I don’t stick to it now, it makes me think I can’t stick it when I go out and get a job’. Jennie explores how this participant was using committing to this intensive, week-long project as a test of his ability to commit to a job when he left the YOI.

To find out more, get in touch with Katy Haigh, Executive Director at Good Vibrations - katy@good-vibrations.org.uk.

The EU's Access to Culture Platform picked up on this piece of research too and included it on their website http://www.access-to-culture.eu/upload/Docs%20ACP/ACPELPublication2013.pdf