<p> The purpose of this project was to locate a potential funding source and write a grant to implement a music therapy program for people living with Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease and other dementias. There are over five million people in the United States who live with Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease and that number is expected to increase significantly. The costs of medication and the negative impacts of dementia require non-pharmacological treatments. </p><p> This program would be held at Alzheimer&rsquo;s Greater Los Angeles in Los Angeles. The May and Stanley Smith Trust was chosen as the funding source. If funded, this program would not only improve the quality of life of individuals suffering living with dementia but also their caregivers. Through various forms of music therapy (individual and group, including activity therapy where participants play instruments) and a support group for caregivers, this program is expected to lead to positive impacts on a large scale.</p>

<p> The purpose of this project was to write a grant proposal to develop and secure funding for a music therapy program for transitional-aged youth (TAY), aged 15 to 18, who are struggling with mental health problems. The Boys &amp; Girls Club of Long Beach (BGCLB) in California was selected as the host agency for this program. After reviewing the literature on music therapy and its positive benefits for youth with mental health issues, the grant writer designed a music therapy program, Melodies of Intervention. The purpose of the proposed program was to help these TAY improve their well-being and chances of success in life by improving their self-esteem, reducing their anxiety, and improving their attitudes toward and relationships with peers. This grant was written to the California Community Foundation (CCF). The actual submission or funding of this grant was not a requirement for the successful completion of the project.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-67). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

<p>Considerable attention has been paid to the impacts of disasters on affected populations, with special attention to disaster mental health on vulnerable populations. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 80% of the city was flooded forcing a mandatory evacuation. At-risk and marginalized communities are the most vulnerable to the impacts of this disaster. The musicians of New Orleans are representative of such a community, and are dispersed across the city representing a wide range of disaster experiences. The experiences of musicians as an at-risk community in a disaster context across evacuation, displacement, and returning to the city have significant impacts on mental health and stress, but also on the social and cultural aspects of life as a musician. While being a member of an at-risk population increases vulnerability to the impact of a disaster, some musicians have proven resilient. This study sought to better understand the factors of resilient musicians in an effort to better inform how to assist this socially and culturally important population in subsequent disasters. Using a Variable-Generating Activity (VGA), 10 musicians were interviewed about their lived experiences before, during and after Hurricane Katrina to create items for a scale of musician resilience. Musicians were nominated as being resilient from a list of 502 musician contacts from the New Orleans Musicians Assistance Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to assisting musicians since Hurricane Katrina. The VGA uses qualitative tenets of triangulation in videotaped interviews of musicians to identify factors associated with musician resilience. Analysis of the musician interviews yielded 155 original truisms associated with factors of musician risk and resilience in a post-Katrina context. 28 truisms were removed as duplicates or redundant, leaving 127 unique truisms spanning the themes of the musician experience including: Risk Factors, Stress and Mental Health; Protective Factors; Social Support; Psychological Impact of Music; and, Community Connection and Mentoring. Discussion of findings supported previous research on musicians, disaster mental health, and associated topics of disaster resilience, including community connection, social support, access to resources, and personal interpretation of disaster outcomes. This study further supports the appropriateness of Conservation of Resources as a useful model with at-risk populations affected by disaster. </p>

This study intended to develop a theoretical framework for understanding children's collaborative creativity in music. The focus was on creative interactions and on how early primary children interact when they engage in creative group music making. Related questions were on: 1) the different communicative media employed, 2) the component aspects of group work influencing children's creative endeavours, 3) the meanings that children attribute to their creative experience, and 4) the educational and ethical values of creative interactions. The study was carried out in a private music school in Rome, Italy. A group of eight 5-7-year-old children participated over eight months in 30 weekly sessions of group creative activities in music and movement. I was the teacher researcher and worked with a co-teacher. This exploratory, interpretive inquiry was framed by sociocultural perspectives on learning and creativity. A qualitative research methodology was adopted, which combined methodological elements derived from case study research, ethnographic approaches, and practitioner research. Data collection methods included participant observation, video-recording of sessions, documentation, and strategies for eliciting children's meanings. Thematic analysis, both theory-driven and data-driven, was conducted in order to identify relevant issues. The findings of the study suggest that in creative collaborative work in music bodily interactions and musical interactions have a stronger significance than verbal interactions. A conceptual distinction was made between 'cooperative' vs 'collaborative' which helped to characterise the different degrees of interactivity in the group's creative work. The study identified a range of component aspects which influenced the quality and productivity of children's collaborative interactions. These included: children's characteristics, context and setting, pedagogical approach, task design, collaboratively emergent processes, underlying tensions in creative learning, reflection on and evaluation of creative work, and time. Children actively gave meaning to their group creative music making mostly in terms of imagery and narrative, though they were gradually shifting towards more purely musical conceptualisations. Creating music in groups had the potential to enhance their sense of competence, ownership and belonging, and supported ethical values such as promoting the person, freedom, responsibility, a multiplicity of perspectives, and democracy. Three meta-themes run throughout the findings of the study, which are in line with sociocultural perspectives: i) a systems perspective as necessary to gain a more comprehensive view of collaborative creativity; ii) creativity as an inherently social phenomenon, and iii) creativity as processual and emergent. The implications for pedagogical practice highlight the importance of including creative collaborative activities in the music curriculum.

Este ensaio é disparado pelos processos musicais que permeiam a jornada de trabalho de catadores de lixo em São Paulo. Neste cotidiano em meio ao lixo, estes abrem brecha para notas musicais, ritmos corridos e assobios melódicos. O objetivo desta pesquisa consiste em compreender, desta forma, o quê cantam estes trabalhadores, e a relação destes cantos com o cotidiano dos mesmos; quero, então, buscar um entendimento da música dentro do contexto urbano do lixo. Este ensaio, portanto, se trata de um estudo etnográfico sobre usos da música no ofício destes trabalhadores e seus desdobramentos no cotidiano destes. Há mais de um milhão de catadores no Brasil. Nas ruas de São Paulo, mais de vinte-cinco mil catadores de lixo reciclável sobrevivem à margem da cidade. Busco, neste trabalho, investigar o quê cantam e como cantam. Assim, contextualizando o fazer musical destes trabalhadores, proponho nesta pesquisa uma etnografia que busque diálogos entre a música, o silêncio e a corporalidade deles, pensando a música no trabalho destes catadores, e como o que cantam e contam diz sobre o que são socialmente. / This essay is triggered by the musical processes that permeate the work day of waste collectors in São Paulo. In the daily routine amidst the waste, they open themselves to musical notes, rushed rythms, and melodic whistles. The objective, here, is to comprehend, in this way, what these workers sing, and the relation between this singing to their daily lives; I seek an understanding of music inside the urban contexto of waste. Therefore, this research is an ethnographic study about the uses of music in the occupation of these workers and their repercussions in their day-to-day. There is more than a million waste collectors in Brazil. In the streets of São Paulo, more than twenty-five thousand survive in the edge of the city. In this essay, I look into what they sing and how they sing. Thus, by contextualizing theis music-making, I propose an ethnography that pursuits an intersection between music, silence and corporeality, through the thought of music in their work-days, and how the music tells about what these workers are socially.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-211).

Thesis (M.Mus.)--New Zealand School of Music, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-211).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-211).