Institutional collaboration creating new spaces for young people's musical authorship : The case of G Songlab

Abstract

Music schools are in a vital position when designing social innovations for opening new opportunities to learn music. Taking the G Songlab initiative as an example, this chapter discusses the potentials of cross-sectoral institutional collaboration for creating new learning spaces that support young people's transformative music engagement, independent creation of art, and equal access to music education. By collaborating with music schools and youth centres and by combining their music-pedagogical expertise, the initiative offers workshops that are open access and free of charge for young people interested in writing their own music. The networking between music schools and youth centres makes it possible to take local needs into account and to make the existing services more accessible. The author argues that G Songlab models a new kind of cross-sectoral professionalism and institutional resilience which the twenty-first-century music education system needs to better meet the demands of a changing society. Moreover, the initiative generates research knowledge about structures that can support young people's creative music-making and enable a deeper understanding of the impact of such structures on active arts participation.