Friends in concert

The case for this study is ‘Friends In Concert’ (FIC) – an annual event organised since 2014 by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR). FIC gathers in-service primary and secondary music teachers through an open call to co-create and perform music in groups on a public platform. Over the years, the event has grown in the number of performers. During the 2020–2021 pandemic, the event was held online, and groups performed virtually. Regardless of whether it was held ‘live’ or online, FIC seems to attract participation from music teachers who seek community. Mentoring support from artist-practitioners in the music community was provided to all participants. While the mentors worked with groups during their practices to give ideas, and in curating some group performances, the participants took the lead in repertoire selection, rehearsing processes, and preparations towards the final performance.

Drawing on notions of creative ecologies and music teacher identity, we pre-sent transformative learning theory as a theoretical lens with which to examine the impact of community music-making on teacher identities. Data, gathered through semi-structured interviews with four FIC participants selected through purposeful sampling (Creswell, 2013), were analysed to address two inter-related questions. First, how have the community music-making experiences within FIC (in face-to-face contexts before the pandemic) impacted participants, all of whom are teachers? Second, what were the conditions within FIC that influenced participants’ understandings of the growth of their music teacher identity? We then discuss the findings and the impact of community-based music-making platforms on music teacher identity.