This think piece explores how community music activities, developed through collaborations between academic and non-academic partners, can foster active citizenship, social cohesion and the development of non-musical competencies. Situated within a UK context marked by sustained arts defunding and policy narratives that privilege STEM, the article asks how community music might articulate its value more explicitly. Drawing on practice-based reflections from the Cohesive Harmonies project, I examine two complementary frame-workers: researcher-driven interventions, exemplified by the Bradford Dhol Project, and organization-led initiatives, illustrated through Music in Citizenship. Through qualitative insights generated from workshops, interviews and surveys, this article considers how structured musical participation can cultivate non-musical competencies, such as confidence, agency, belonging and emotional regulation. Rather than positioning these competencies as replacements for artistic value, I consider how they emerge through musical processes themselves. The article reflects on how articulating such outcomes may be necessary in the current policy climate, while remaining attentive to the creative and relational foundations of community music practice.
Tenley Martin (Mon,) studied this question.