Abstract

The claim for the benefits of engagement in musical activities has been documented through a growing literature that seeks to bring evidence on other-than-musical gains from children and young people participation in activities involving singing and ensemble playing. Further research has been suggesting that the possibility of acting musically in synchrony with others may be responsible for increasing cooperation and creating social attachment among groups that tend to live in exclusion and social disengagement. This presentation will discuss these crucial issues in connection with results from a large scale study done in Portugal with the project Orquestra Geração, a programme inspired by El Sistema within a perspective of social inclusion through musical practice, primarily directed at children and adolescents of greater educational and social vulnerability.

Bio

Graça Mota (pianist, Master in Music Education, Boston University, USA , PhD in Psychology of Music, University of Keel, UK) has been for more than 25 years engaged in music teacher’s education at the Music Department of the College of Education in the Polytechnic Institute in Porto, Portugal. Currently, she is Director of the CIPEM (Research Center in Psychology of Music and Music Education). Her present research is concerned with collaborative practices in the arts, musical practice and social inclusion, music in prisons, and has been published in Portugal, Spain, US, UK, Latvia and Brazil. She is currently an elected Board member of the International Society for Music Education for the biennium 2014–2016.