Singing Our Stories amplifies the voices of refugee and newcomer children and young people experiencing displacement, migration, and settlement. This project responds to the fact that refugee children and youth face substantial discriminatory assumptions about their experiences, positionalities, and lives that are actualized as systemic barriers to their settlement and, ultimately, their wellbeing. Music is key to disrupting these barriers because it provides a tangible and creative way for young people to reclaim and tell their own stories and share insight into their own lived experiences. Partnering with Canadian refugee settlement agencies COSTI and CultureLink, international research leaders in the field of applied community music, and global research sites, Singing Our Stories mobilizes arts- and music- based program delivery as a means to support wellbeing goals that can only be achieved through understanding, acknowledging, centering, and investing in the lived experiences of refugee children and youth. Empowering creativity through networked community music making, group singing, and songwriting across refugee communities in Canadian and transnational contexts, this partnership uses music to speak-back and voice-up against systemic racism, ageism, discrimination, and marginalization. COSTI and CultureLink lead this project in identifying how policies around program delivery and refugee services are based on assumptive and discriminatory ideologies about refugee children’s experiences. Often silenced by service organizations, governments, and adult-driven policies that characterize them as voiceless and powerless victims, refugee children and young people can use their lived knowledge and stories to teach others, activate social change, and regain power by building networks, articulating personal voice, and expressing musical agency. The significance of this partnership is its immediate benefit for the children and youth involved in the project and for the partner organizations. By mobilizing youth- and community-based knowledge for cultural and policy change, this project is a model for community-engaged research that has global significance for children and young people facing displacement and settlement, and society at large. This collaboration is unique and meaningful in adopting an approach to music program delivery that provides space for young people to compose, create, and connect with other refugee communities around the world.

Month: May   Year: 2022

Month: May   Year: 2027

Continued research on issues pertaining to music, education and culture in Venda communities. Supported by several research grants including a SSHRC Insight Development grant (2014-2016) to explore the loss of initiation ceremony and music and the impact this has on children’s lives and cultural education. Ongoing research includes child and youth-led research on the role of traditional music and arts in children's lives in Venda communities.

Funded research on the ways in which music can be used to help refugee children achieve wellbeing needs and goals (social, cultural, and physical). Jan 2011-present.

Funded research on music in children’s lives in remote Aboriginal communities and the integration of traditional music into the school classroom as a way to support language revitalization. Continued research funded by three-year Australian Research Council Linkage grant (2013-2016 – postponed to 2014-2017) and by York University minor research grant.

Funded research on ethnomusicology archives and the John Blacking Collection at the Callaway Archive, UWA. Research includes current co-curating of a John Blacking exhibition to open at the University of Western Australia, Perth Nov.1, 2013 and at the University of Venda, Thohoyahdou, Limpopo, South Africa in July 2014.

Carried out interview studies on how teenagers use music to regulate personal and social behaviour including use of web-based technologies.

Carried out follow-up research on Venda children’s music and dance as a Postdoctoral Fellow for the University of Western Australia. August 30 - October 1 2009.

Research on the musical cultures of children in South Africa and the use of music in children’s media and educational programs. Funded by SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Doctoral Fellowship. February 2005 - July 2007.

Archival Research, Callaway Centre, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Research conducted with the John Blacking Collection on the study of Venda children’s music held by the Callaway Centre for Research in Music Education. June - September 2003.