Disability Arts and Culture

International Critical Approaches

Petra Kuppers, Petra Kuppers

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789380019
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

This collection offers insight into different study approaches to disability art and culture practices, and asks: what does it mean to approach disability-focused cultural production and consumption as generative sites of meaning-making? International scholars and practitioners use ethnographic and participatory action research approaches; textual and discourse analysis; as well as other methods to discover how disability figures into our contemporary world(s). Chapters within the collection explore, amongst other topics, deaf theatre productions, representations of disability on-screen, community engagement projects and disabled bodies in dance. Disability Arts and Culture provides a comprehensive overview and a range of case studies benefitting both the practitioner and scholar.

Ethnographic Approaches: Project Reports

Chapter 11

Re-voicing: Community choir participation as a medium for identity formation amongst people with learning disabilities

Nedim Hassan

Introduction

The potential for specific forms of cultural practice such as music-making to enable people to reflect upon their sense of self and relationship to society has long been recognized as powerful. In his seminal conclusion to Culture and Society Raymond Williams wrote that: ‘To take a meaning from experience, and to try to make it active, is in fact our process of growth’ (1963: 323). In this chapter the implication that cultural practice can foster the means to actively reflect upon the self in relation to others will be explored by focusing upon a distinctive choir project – the ReVoice choir – which was launched in Merseyside, North West England during 2011.

Drawing upon ethnographic findings and focusing upon the experiences of contributors to the choir with learning disabilities, this chapter will consider how the choir was developed and how it became a particular context for the formation of solidarity and different performances that accomplished valuable ‘identity work’ (DeNora 2000: 69). Following DeNora, it will be elucidated that musical material can become a rich resource for people to reflect upon self and collective identity. It will demonstrate that music is ‘worked with’ in the sense that it can become part of how people imagine and communicate their selves, both on an intrapersonal and interpersonal level. Participants in the choir project were involved with reflecting upon how their involvement in it connected with their self-identity, but also with reflecting upon how their experiences related to a collective identity fostered by the project’s aims. At the same time, the chapter will illustrate that the choir performance context is a highly distinctive one for facilitating this kind of reflection on identity, particularly because of the way that it requires the choral singer to listen to their self, while simultaneously listening to others. In this regard, it will argue that choirs have the potential to elicit powerful communicative experiences that are both personal and social at the same time.

The ReVoice choir was initially formed by members of two community organizations based in Merseyside: Moving on with Life & Learning (MOWLL), an organization dedicated to promoting social inclusion for people with learning disabilities, and ichoir, an inclusive community choir and charitable organization that promotes well-being through singing and song-writing. When ReVoice was formed it was an emotional time for members of MOWLL; one of their peers had been killed by a 21 year old man in September 2010. The murder had been a clear example of disability hate crime. In the aftermath of this tragic event MOWLL, together with the victim’s family, had set up the FACE Facts Campaign, which was designed to raise awareness about hate crime and bullying that targets people with disabilities.

The ReVoice choir was primarily set up to support the FACE Facts Campaign. Members of MOWLL who were interested in singing were introduced to members from ichoir Liverpool. Led by ichoir’s musical director and ichoir members with previous experience of choir performance, the aim was to establish a new choir that would help to produce musical material that could be used in a documentary film raising awareness about disability hate crime. The account that follows will focus primarily upon the choir rehearsal process, considering how the choir became both a medium for social bonding during this difficult time and a context for the formation of self and collective identity amongst members.

Partly influenced by Elliott’s ‘praxial philosophy’ this study asserts that music needs to be understood as practice that is situated and ‘revealing of one’s self and one’s relationship with a community’ (1995: 14). At the same time, it recognizes DeNora’s (2015: 1–2) assertion that music is always ‘music-plus’; it is a form of ‘cultural activity’ that becomes meaningful on a local level. In this account, activities that took place within the ReVoice choir will be referred to as ‘cultural practices’ to reflect the way that, as will be explained more fully below, this choir featured a range of creative and social practices that were not simply ‘musical’. Furthermore, drawing on Goffman (1959) this chapter will reveal that choir rehearsals nurtured a participatory culture achieved through specific social interactions and musical performing that, in turn, fostered distinctive kinds of self-presentation and affective experience. In addition, the chapter will assert that the sorts of ‘identity work’ afforded by the ReVoice choir context need to be understood in connection with wider debates about the lives of people with learning disabilities (DeNora 2000: 69).

Background

The ReVoice choir was formed in January 2011 and began to have regular rehearsal meetings until the end of June 2011. Supported by members of ichoir, the choir consisted of people with varying learning disabilities who regularly attended MOWLL, MOWLL support staff, and volunteers. The Musical Director of ichoir was able to adopt an initial leadership role and to train choir members in basic choral singing techniques, as well as to provide compositional expertise when developing musical material for the FACE Facts film. I provided some initial organizational support for the choir by securing a venue for rehearsal at the University of Liverpool and then voluntarily began to regularly attend choir sessions as an active member. After a few early rehearsal sessions where the various members began to get to know each other, for the sake of convenience and flexibility the venue for rehearsals shifted to a nearby church that allowed the ReVoice choir to use its facilities free of charge.

It was at this point when I informally discussed with MOWLL members and staff the possibility of conducting ethnographic research with the choir. Although I am a researcher with previous experience of conducting ethnography with a different group of adults with learning disabilities, I did not want to emphasize my identity as a researcher from the outset. Rather, to establish trust, I downplayed the research, adopting a role that was closer to the ‘complete participant’ (Jarvie 2003: 105). Gradually, as I developed social and musical relationships within the choir, during breaks in rehearsals I had more conversations with members about initial research findings. Prior to a focus group discussion that is examined below, the findings from participant observation were outlined in a presentation and MOWLL members were reminded of the ethics of the research, and that they could still choose to withdraw if they wished.

The structure and social dynamics of the ReVoice choir gradually changed as the weeks went by. Some of these changes will be examined in more depth during later sections, although here it is pertinent to briefly outline broad aspects. Several of the early choir rehearsal sessions were primarily structured by Chris, the Musical Director of ichoir. He facilitated icebreaker exercises, introduced the group to vocal warm-up techniques and suggested songs for the choir to practice. The repertoire for the ReVoice choir during these early stages consisted of popular chart hits such as Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’, as well as gospel and traditional folk songs like Francesca Matthews’ ‘Great Day!’ and the Ghanaian folk song ‘Senwa Dedende’. Once the choir became more established and members became more familiar with each other, members of MOWLL became more active in making suggestions to add to the repertoire. Indeed, by the end of the first month of rehearsals, icebreakers and warm-ups were dispensed with because choir members were keen to not only rehearse previous songs, but in some cases to state their preferences for new songs that could be incorporated into the sessions.

The ReVoice choir not only went on to develop music for the documentary film, they also gave two performances. One of these was during the launch of the FACE Facts documentary that took place in a cinema in Liverpool city centre on Monday 27 June 2011. The second of these occurred a day earlier on Sunday 26 June 2011 at a vigil held outside of a pub near to University of Liverpool, which was in memory of the member of MOWLL who had been killed. Members of his family were in attendance at what was a highly moving event. Shortly after these events, the choir went into hiatus as MOWLL’s resources were concentrated upon promoting the FACE Facts campaign and developing other projects.

Choral singing, identity and disability

There is substantial evidence to indicate that participation in choral singing can have a positive impact upon peoples’ general sense of well-being. For instance, Clift and Hancox’s (2010) large-scale questionnaire-based research conducted with choristers from Australia, Germany and England indicates that choir participation can help to foster physical, psychological, social, emotional and intellectual benefits amongst a range of individuals. More important to this research, studies have found that participation in choral singing can become particularly important for vulnerable or marginalized groups (Bailey and Davidson 2003; Davidson and Faulkner 2010; Dingle et al. 2012). Because some members of the ReVoice choir have learning disabilities, they have experienced discrimination and stigmatization in their lives, which some have discussed openly at university events.¹ Members of MOWLL could therefore be defined as a marginalized group to a certain extent, although as will be explained shortly such categorization can be reductive and problematic.

A central issue that can contribute to feelings of marginalization for people with learning disabilities is a lack of control over their lives. Dowson (1997: 106) suggests that despite the move towards ‘care in the community’ that has occurred since the 1980s, people with learning disabilities are still likely to experience feelings of exclusion from ‘ordinary life’. Dowson asserts that, for many, daily experiences in care services are characterized by a lack of agency and control over basic aspects of everyday life. Indeed, Borland and Ramcharan (1997) go as far as to utilize the concept of excluded identities when discussing the life experiences of people with learning disabilities. They write that: ‘If the conditions for experiencing everyday life are those in which the person is excluded, it is likely that a person will be socialized into an excluded self-concept and identity’ (Borland and Ramcharan 1997: 88). These issues of exclusion and a lack of choice and control have been recognized by previous UK governments, with the White Paper, Valuing People, emphasizing the importance of policies that focus on choice, inclusion and independence (Department of Health [DoH] 2001).

This policy agenda has seen the rise of person-centred planning and some funding for advocacy projects designed to enable people with learning disabilities to take more control over the key issues affecting their lives (Hoole and Morgan 2010). However, despite this agenda and such initiatives, research from the likes of Hoole and Morgan (2010) and Mansell (2010) indicates that for many people with learning disabilities, exclusion and a lack of control continue to be a dominant feature within their everyday lives. Given this context, it is useful to examine the potential for cultural activities such as choral singing to alleviate such experiences of marginalization.

Existing studies of choir participation and musical performance amongst marginalized groups have yielded some significant findings. Bailey and Davidson’s (2003) qualitative interview-based research with a Canadian choir made up of men who had been previously homeless is particularly relevant in relation to this present study. Drawing upon the work of music therapist Evan Ruud and his contention that musical performance can create agency, Bailey and Davidson argue that choir performance for this group enabled them to convey a positive sense of self. This was especially important for this group of homeless men because being in the choir enabled them to feel less helpless and dependent on others. Rather than viewing life as directed by others, the agency facilitated by musical performance fostered a sense of control because during choir participation the men felt able to ‘act on one’s own behalf’ (Bailey and Davidson 2003: 28).

Research conducted by MacDonald and Miell (2002) and Haywood (2006) has also illustrated how musical activity can become important for fostering the agency of people with disabilities. MacDonald and Miell’s qualitative interviews revealed how certain individuals with le...