Play It Loud: A Creative Music Program For Youth In Regina

Abstract

Play it Loud was a creative music project I developed for youth in residence at Ranch Ehrlo, a multiservice agency providing care for families and youth in Saskatchewan. As an interdisciplinary project drawing on artistic and ethnographic qualitative research methodologies, it seeks to understand how youth in care, facing a diverse set of challenges, grow and heal while creating new music. I believe playing music can promote healing and growth in youth. I used musical improvisation as the pedagogical foundation to create the opportunity for participants to teach themselves through experimentation and enable their creative expression. In response to the diverse identities of the participants I took what has been called a “two-eyed seeing approach” to incorporate both Western and Indigenous worldviews in the sessions. At the end of the project participants wrote and recorded solo musical pieces of their own creation. It was a relational experience: participants encountered distinct challenges and through selfdirection learnt from their own discoveries. There was evidence the process enabled the participants and facilitators alike to learn, grow, and heal in personal and unique ways while creating evocative and expressive music.