Music is a potent catalyst for change with the ability to transcend geographic, cultural and language barriers and move people to action. Many of history’s most effective social movements have channeled their message through their music
How can music help advance the SDGs?
Below is an exert from Brydie-Leigh Bartleet’s article that can be found in full at https://www.griffith.edu.au/engage/professional-learning/content-centre/How-music-could-help-your-organisation-advance-the-SDGs
Musicians have the unique capacity to help address some of the most pressing issues facing our generation. They can activate the social imagination and bring forth new ways of knowing, understanding and making sense of an increasingly complex world. This is because music has a unique capacity to communicate beyond the limits of language, and express difficult ideas in ways that evocatively open hearts and minds. In other words, music is not merely about life, but is rather implicated in the formulation of life. It is always in flux, changing in response to the world and in turn changing the world.
Music never operates in isolation. As the projects in our compendium show, music accumulates its meaning and identity from the ways in which it participates in other activities. While music is never a magic bullet, it can be a crucial piece in the puzzle when addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing our generation, and an important cultural solution that can help advance the SDGs.
Music has the capacity to advance the SDGs across a wide range of domains from the individual to the interpersonal, and upstream to the community and structural levels. That said, when thinking about music and the SDGs, music also needs to be understood as a creative and cultural activity that has both intrinsic and instrumental (e.g. social) value. People are not customarily drawn to participating in the music projects featured in our compendium for their instrumental benefits alone (for example their SDG outcomes), but rather they engage because music can provide them with meaning and a distinctive type of pleasure and emotional stimulation. These intrinsic effects are satisfying in themselves; however, many of them can lead to individual capabilities and social outcomes that do have compelling instrumental benefits in relation to the SDGs. Here are some examples.
- Brydie-Leigh Bartleet is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor at the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University (Australia).
Musicians Without Borders in El Salvador, Kosovo, Netherlands, Palestine, Rwanda
Musicians Without Borders is the world’s pioneer NGO using music for peacebuilding and social change. They work in partnership with local musicians and organisations to use the power of music to bridge divides, connect communities, and heal the wounds of war through trauma-informed ways of facilitating music making.
Plant The Seed - Unpack Your Thinking
Katy Perry has released a song called Chained to the Rhythm which contains a string of messages underlying in the lyrics and the video clip. In your Writers Notebook unpack the filmclip and talk to the author about the meaning behind the lyrics.
As you watch the video clip think about the following questions:
- What do you notice about the people, are they different or are they actually the all the same?
- Think about the following quote ‘World of repetition and ignorance, where technology renders us oblivious to people’s real problems.’
- What do you think it means when all the houses fall from the ride?
- What is the meaning behind the petrol pumps pouring water? How does this symbolise the connection to the world water crisis?
- What does Katy notice when she is sitting watching the 3D movie?
- Skip Marley delivers the biggest message of the song, what is it?
Modelled Thinking
Here is my thinking – Bronwyn Joyce The Global Write Creator
Let's Write
Prompt 1
100 Word Challenge
Look closely! Use the picture and write a piece in just 100 words. You can write a story, a description or even a persuasive piece. Be creative and see what magic you can produce in just 100 words. Upload your writing to The Global Write Wakelet Gallery. Be Creative!
Leweton Cultural Experience in Vanuatu
The Leweton Cultural Experience uses traditional forms of storytelling such as music, dance, arts, language, and cultural practices (for example the Women’s Magical Water Music ceremony), to promote cultural sustainability, environmental knowledge around climate change, as well as vital income generation through cultural tourism.
Prompt 2
Use music to inspire others. Australia singer Delta Goodrem stood infront the world and sung a song that united the world at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 – Together We Are One.
Listen to the song here –
Using Delta’s song as your back drop create a video showing a world united as one. There are many platforms you could use such a WeView Animoto.
Once you have created your video up load it to The Global Write Gallery.
Here is my video – Bronwyn Joyce The Global Write Creator
Prompt 3
Write your own song or poem.
Challenge yourself to write a song or poem using the sdgs to raise as your inspiration. Your voice can be used to change the world. Listen to these children and their song.
Make sure to share you song or poem with The Global Write team at our Wakelet Gallery.
Wakelet Gallery
Share your stories, thinking and posters with us at our Global Write Wakelet Gallery.
Music and the SDGs
