Play It Loud: A Creative Music Program For Youth In Regina
Abstract
Play it Loud was a creative music project I developed for youth in residence at Ranch
Ehrlo, a multiservice agency providing care for families and youth in Saskatchewan. As
an interdisciplinary project drawing on artistic and ethnographic qualitative research
methodologies, it seeks to understand how youth in care, facing a diverse set of
challenges, grow and heal while creating new music. I believe playing music can
promote healing and growth in youth. I used musical improvisation as the pedagogical
foundation to create the opportunity for participants to teach themselves through
experimentation and enable their creative expression. In response to the diverse identities
of the participants I took what has been called a “two-eyed seeing approach” to
incorporate both Western and Indigenous worldviews in the sessions. At the end of the
project participants wrote and recorded solo musical pieces of their own creation. It was
a relational experience: participants encountered distinct challenges and through selfdirection
learnt from their own discoveries. There was evidence the process enabled the
participants and facilitators alike to learn, grow, and heal in personal and unique ways
while creating evocative and expressive music.