The iron cage of professionalization in community music

Issue 18:2 of the International Journal of Community Music ( IJCM ) includes a literature review of ‘trauma-informed practices’ (Hansen), five research studies (Moufarrej; Fraser; Odena, Mateos-Moreno and Salinas-Maceda; Martin; Pitupumnak and Saibunmi) and book review (Kinnunen) of Dave Camlin’s (2023) recent book, Music Making and Civic Imagination: A Holistic Philosophy . Martin studied a music workshop, ‘Togetherness through music: Uniting Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia’, aimed at conflict transformation. It is a classic example of a one-off interventionist workshop model. Three of the articles (Fraser; Moufarrej; Odena, Mateos-Moreno and Salinas-Maceda) can be considered as case studies of the ongoing intervention-based work of specific organizations (Common Wheel in Glasgow, the Fayha Choir and Sounds of Change in Syria and EnseñARTE in Cochabamba). Pitupumnak and Saibunmi’s study of the Intergenerational Choir Project at Chiang Mai University also represents an intervention, but of a university–community partnership rather than an NGO or charity-based organization. Community music examples examined by the researchers include choir programming in Syrian refugee camps (Moufarrej), intergenerational choirs in Thailand (Pitupumnak and Saibunmi), a youth empowerment music programme for impoverished youth in Bolivia (Odena, Mateos-Moreno and Salinas-Maceda), a settler–First Nations conflict transformation project in Australia (Martin) and a programme in Scotland for people with mental health issues (Fraser).