No abstract

A broad sociocultural perspective defines trauma as the result of an event, a series of events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening, with lasting impacts on an individual’s physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing. Contexts and practices that aim to be “trauma-informed” strive to attend to the complex impacts of trauma, integrating knowledge into policies and practices, and providing a sanctuary from harm. However, there is a body of critical and decolonial scholarship that challenges the ways in which “trauma-informed” practice prioritizes individualized interventions, reinscribes colonial power relations through its conceptualizations of safety, and obscures the role of systemic injustices. Within music therapy trauma scholarship, research has thus far pointed to the affordances of music in ameliorating symptoms of trauma, bypassing unavailable cognitive processes, and working from a strengths-based orientation. In critiquing the tendency of the dominant trauma paradigm to assign vulnerability and reinforce the individual’s responsibility to develop resilience through adversity, this conceptual analysis outlines potential alternatives within music therapy. Drawing on a case example from a research project with young people in school, I elucidate the ways in which music therapy can respond to power relations as they occur within and beyond “trauma-informed” spaces. I highlight two overarching potentials for music therapy within a shifting trauma paradigm: (1) as a site in which to reframe perceived risk by fostering young people’s resistance and building their political agency and (2) in challenging the assumption of “safe spaces” and instead moving toward practices of “structuring safety.”

This chapter reflects upon dominant gender and sexuality norms, and ways of navigating these in music-based contexts without positioning marginalized groups as inherently vulnerable. Queer theorists dedicated to transforming endemic gendered violence emphasize the importance of examining the effects of normativity to which we are all subjected, and the significant potential of creativity and collaboration. This chapter establishes a theoretical grounding as to why exploring gender and sexuality is relevant for all young people, and how addressing systems of normativity can be considered a relevant ‘intervention’ within music therapy. Using illustrative case vignettes and drawing on existing critical frameworks, the chapter offers suggestions as to how practitioners may better confront their own beliefs, think politically about assessment, work towards safe(r) spaces, and support young people’s gender-based activism through music.

This study aimed to explore how young people can critically engage with music videos to explore dominant constructions of gender and sexuality. As the primary consumers of popular music and music videos, adolescents are also a group who exist in a unique sociocultural space, where both misogyny and feminism are present in their highly media-driven lives. This study used focus group workshops with young people in high school to generate qualitative data based on the participants’ discussion and interpretations of gender and sexuality in two music videos. Seven groups of young people aged 14 – 16 analysed two popular music videos and reflected particularly upon discourses of expected femininity and female sexuality. Discussion elucidated insightful analysis around gendered subjectivity, and presented three complex and opposing themes, which are explored in detail. A cohesive thread emerged in the data in which young people demonstrated their capacity to identify hegemonic gender constructs, while also relying on these constructs to read and police the women shown in the music videos.

This paper conceptualises songwriting as an ‘after-queer’ approach for exploring notions of gender and sexuality with young people. The article draws on songs created by seven groups of young people in music-based workshops which took place in schools with participants aged between 14–17. During these workshops, songwriting was used to explore the participants' imaginings of what gender might look like in their "perfect world". 'After-queer' scholarship is introduced and referred to throughout the paper as it relates to queer theory and research with young people, particularly focusing on discourses of risk and vulnerability that emerge across these fields. The paper highlights the value of creative and arts-based methodologies in queer research, through which expansion and questions of possibility, alternative, and identity can be raised and responded to. 'After queer' is offered as a useful lens for critical analysis, particularly in light of complex questions related to the promotion of "diversity" that emerged through the findings.