Participatory Action Research through the Adaptive Music Bridging Program: Outreach, Research or Both?
Dr Anthea Skinner, Senior Lecturer in Disability Creative Performance, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne
The Adaptive Music Bridging Program (AMBP) is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne’s IncLab and Melbourne Youth Orchestras. Running since 2023, the AMBP is an inclusive music ensemble providing beginner instrumental and ensemble music education to children who are disabled, d/Deaf or neurodivergent. The program grew out of previous research conducted by our team, that showed that children with disability were missing out on their first years of instrumental music education. The AMBP was created with the dual goals of providing an inclusive learning space for young musicians with disability, and developing best-practice inclusive music pedagogy and technology guidelines to allow more widespread inclusion of people with disability in music education. This paper discusses the way that the AMBP team balance the competing needs to simultaneously support the program’s research and educational needs, and the risks, difficulties and benefits that this juxtaposition provides to researchers, participants and the disability and music education communities respectively.
Speaker
Dr Anthea Skinner is an internationally recognised musicologist specialising in disability music, adaptive design, and Indonesian Studies. She is the inaugural Senior Lecturer in Disability Creative Performance at University of Melbourne and an ARC Industry Research Fellow. Anthea is the Director (People and Culture) of the Inclusive Arts Design Lab – IncLab and she is the founder and coordinator of Melbourne Youth Orchestras' Adaptive Music Bridging Program, which was awarded the 2025 Melbourne Award (Access and Inclusion).
This event was originally published on the School of Music website.