Artivism: Can Community Music Help Create More Equitable Societies?, with Brydie-Leigh Bartleet
Social inequity can be understood as inexcusable disparities in the resources, opportunities, rewards, and rights a person has based on their position within society.
The foundations of social inequity are structural and relate to social systems of power that cause certain groups to thrive at the expense of others. Social inequity is escalating, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating problems of long-term disadvantage in many communities. There are growing calls for place-based initiatives that bring together diverse stakeholders and sectors to work collectively with communities on addressing these complex challenges. Professor Bartleet will draw on insights from her Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, called the Creative Change Project, which is seeking to examine the role community music can play in addressing these entrenched social inequities in Australia. Specifically, her research aims to explore the creative change that music can bring to place-based initiatives tackling social disadvantage in communities.
In her talk, Professor Bartleet will pose the question: How can we become better at conceptualizing and critically framing how the positive outcomes from music-making lead to the kinds of macro, systemic changes needed for social equity to occur? Professor Bartleet will open up a conversation about the role community music can play in addressing entrenched social inequity.
Bio:
Professor Brydie-Leigh Bartleet is a dynamic research leader, award-winning educator, respected community collaborator, and arts sector advocate. She is currently an ARC Future Fellow at Griffith University. Over the past 20 years, her work has advanced our understanding of the cultural, social, economic, educational, and environmental benefits of the arts in First Nations’ Communities, prisons, war affected cities, educational and industry contexts. Her research is distinctively interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral in nature, connecting the arts with areas as diverse as social inequity, regional development, criminology and corrections, health equity, and human rights.
She contributes to many sector initiatives and organisations. She is President of the Social Impact of Music Making (SIMM) NGO in Belgium (2021-2024), non-Executive Director of QMF (2023-2026), Associate Editor of the International Journal of Community Music, Senior Research Fellow at the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community in Canada (2021-2024), External Examiner for the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (2021-2025), and Course Director for the Global Leaders Institute, MBA in Arts Innovation in the U.S.
She is a highly experienced research leader, having served as Director of the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre (2015-2021), Deputy Director (Research) of Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (2016-2021), led a number of major projects, and spearheaded university initiatives in reconciliation and research impact. She has served on the Board of Music Australia (2013-2021), and as Chairperson and Commissioner of the International Society for Music Education’s Community Music Activities Commission (2010-2016).
Register here.
The vision of Artivism: The Power of Art for Social Transformation is to generate a movement with committed social artivists in response to historic global unrest. Artivism aims to generate community through multi-disciplinary teamwork for a more dignified and meaningful coexistence, however you define these terms. The goal of this initiative is to nurture confidence in taking continuous action from wherever you are by means of reciprocity.
Artivism: The Power of Art Social Transformation, grew out of Illuminations of Social Imagination: Learning From Maxine Greene, (Dio Press, 2019), edited by Teachers College alumni Courtney Weida and Carolina Cambronero-Varela, and Dolapo Adeniji-Neill, of Adelphi University. “The concept for this book is inspired by the late Maxine Greene (2000), who described her enduring philosophical focus and legacy of social imagination as “the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools” (p. 5).
— Publisher’s Description
Artivism: The Power of Art Social Transformation is jointly sponsored by Adelphi University, Sing for Hope, and the Gottesman Libraries.
