Supporting Collaboration in Changing Cultural Landscapes : operabyyou.com as an Arena for Creativity in ‘Kaleidoscopic Music’

Abstract

A steadily growing curiosity about informal music learning environments (e.g. Green, 2001; Johansson, 2004; Karlsen, 2010; Veblen, Messenger, Silverman, & Elliott, 2013), conjoined with a growing interest in online music communities (e.g. Ballantyne, Barrett, Temmerman, Harrison, & Meissner, 2009; Miller, 2012; Partti, 2009; Partti & Karlsen, 2010; Salavuo, 2006; Waldron & Veblen, 2008), continues to be one of the most widespread trends within music education research. Teachers, researchers and musicians all seek to come to terms with rapidly changing cultural landscapes of music-making and -learning. Indeed, one of the most striking cultural shifts of recent times has to do with people turning away from solely consuming ready-made media content offered by television, for instance, to actively participating in the user-generated culture of social media, such as online fan production and citizen journalism. Statistics reveal that in Finland – one of the top 10 countries in Europe in the prevalence of Internet use – 86 per cent of 16 to 24-yearold Finns participate in some web-based social network service(s) (Official Statistics of Finland, 2011). Similarly, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010) shows that over two-thirds of American teen Internet users – that is, 93 per cent of all American teens – reported using an online social networking site; and over a third stated that they use the Internet for sharing online media content, such as artwork, stories and videos, that they had created themselves. This emerging cultural phenomenon in new media is often referred to as participatory culture, and has been connected to the potential for more democratic cultural, political and civic engagement occurring largely outside of formal institutions of education (see, for example, Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robinson, & Weigel, 2006; Kann, Berry, Gant, & Zager, 2007; Schäfer, 2011).