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Although the value of service-learning opportunities has long been aligned to student engagement, global citizenship, and employability, the rhetoric can be far removed from the reality of coordinating such activities within higher education. This article stems from arts-based service-learning initiatives with Indigenous communities in Australia. It highlights challenges encountered by the projects and the tactics used to overcome them. These are considered in relation to Young, Shinnar, Ackerman, Carruthers, and Young’s four tactics for starting and sustaining service-learning initiatives. The article explores the realities of service-learning initiatives that exist at the edge of institutional funding and rely on the commitment of key individuals. The research revises Young et al.’s four tactics and adds the fifth tactic of organizational commitment, which emerged as a distinct strategy used to prompt new commitment, enact existing commitment, and extend limited commitment at the organizational level.

This article explores the potential for music making activities such as jamming, song writing, and performance to act as a medium for intercultural connection and relationship building during service learning programs with Indigenous communities in Australia. To set the context, the paper begins with an overview of current international perspectives on service learning and then moves towards a theoretical and practical discussion of how these processes, politics, and learning outcomes arise when intercultural engagement is used in service learning programs. The paper then extends this discussion to consider the ways in which shared music making can bring a sense of intercultural “proximity” that has the potential to evoke deep learning experiences for all involved in the service learning activity. These learning experiences arise from three different “facings” in the process of making music together: facing others together; facing each other; facing ourselves. In order to flesh out how these theoretical ideas work in practice, the article draws on insights and data from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University’s award winning Winanjjikari Service Learning Program, which has been running in partnership with Barkly Regional Arts and Winanjjikari Music Centre in Tennant Creek since 2009. This program involves annual service learning trips where university music students travel to Central Australia to work alongside Aboriginal and non-Indigenous musicians and artists on a range of community-led projects. By looking at the ways in which shared music making brings participants in this program “face to face”, we explore how this proximity leads to powerful learning experiences that foster mutual appreciation, relationship building, and intercultural reconciliation.

Music higher education institutions are increasingly recognising the educational value of intercultural learning experiences. Delivering such learning experiences in a way that provides music students with a rich cultural and musical learning experience, rather than a superficial one, can be a challenging task, particularly in the case of short-term ‘mobility’ or ‘study-abroad’ programmes. This article explores ways to address this challenge by reflecting on student learnings from a suite of international study experiences, or ‘global mobility programmes’, at one Australian tertiary music institution, run in collaboration with community partners, universities and nongovernmental organisations in the Asia Pacific. Focusing on how intercultural music-making in the context can enhance students’ musical practices and identities, we first outline the sociocultural contexts of our music global mobility programmes in Cambodia, China and India, and explore the different modes of music-making these experiences afforded. We then draw on Coessens’ ‘web of artistic practice’ to explore site-specific examples of the ways in which global mobility programmes can enhance students’ musical practices and identities. These findings hold particular relevance for music educators and higher education institutions in justifying, designing and carrying out such intercultural experiences to maximise student learning and success.

While there have been many efforts to define community music, definitions have tended to be either too specific or too general to be of great use to practitioners. Much of the published research on the topic seems to be based on single projects, often conducted by the facilitators involved. While this has led to valuable contributions to understanding the scope and breadth of this field, it has done little to create perspectives that can be applied across the wide gamut of practices referred to as community music activities. Sound links, an extensive research project conducted in Australia with support from the Australian Research Council, has compared six divergent practices across the country with a consistent -principally ethnographic -methodology, yielding a wealth of insights into the working of this phenomenon. One of the key outcomes of the project is not a new definition of community music, but rather a framework that maps out the key 'ingredients' of successful practices across demographic, geographic, cultural, and contextual variations. These enable better understanding, planning, execution and evaluation of community music activities.Community music is a vibrant and widespread phenomenon in Australia, enriching the lives of people across geographical locations as well as diverse social and cultural backgrounds. 1 In the literature on learning and teaching and making music, it has perhaps been less recognized than it deserves as a powerful player in the cultural arena (cf. Schippers, 2010, pp. 89-97). In this respect, it may be the victim of one of its very strengths: strong local engagement and support often leads to relative independence from external drivers and funding. As a consequence, in-depth reports and evaluations are thin on the ground. From a policy point of view, that is ironic: there is a strong case

Community music facilitators move in and between many diverse settings. They can be found facilitating local music activities in arts centers, schools, sporting grounds, recording studios, places of worship, living rooms, and a wide range of other community contexts. This article focuses on community music facilitators who have been invited into the school environment to stimulate or establish active music-making opportunities. It shows that community music facilitators can provide music educators working in schools with models of a range of teaching practices, which can connect to a wide diversity of learning styles, especially in socially and culturally diverse environments. Likewise, music educators working in schools (who tend to have formal education qualifications) can provide pedagogical models for community music practices. Both positions have much to offer each other in this respect.

In this article I consider how music can expand the creative possibilities of autoethnography. Likewise, I also explore how autoethnography can offer musicians a means to reflect on their creative work in culturally insightful ways. In order to 'play out' these disciplinary considerations, I craft an autoethnographic narrative that centers on my own creative practice as a conductor. Moving between description and action, dialogue and introspection, my narrative reveals some of the complexities of reflecting and writing about music in this way. While this narrative is grounded in

Sound Links examines the dynamics of community music in Australia, and the models it represents for informal music learning and teaching. This involves researching a selection of vibrant musical communities across the country, exploring their potential for complementarity and synergy with music in schools. This article focuses on the most significant themes that have emerged from the author's recent Sound Links fieldwork in four musical communities across Australia. Drawing on insights from well over 300 community music practitioners, participants, educators, and administrators, it will touch on the critical success factors, key challenges, learning dynamics and models for community-school collaborations found in these diverse community settings. These themes will be interwoven with ideas and concepts from community studies in the humanities and community music literature to provide a range of insights into the social, cultural and educational dynamics of musical communities in Australia. Keywords community music learning dynamics community-school collaborations I am sitting on the outskirts of a circle that has been formed by Attitude participants at the Dandenong Ranges Music Council. This is a weekly community music therapy session which is run for people with special needs. The group is led by a music therapist who sings and plays guitar, and her assistant who plays didjeridu. They sing songs about mother earth and adapt the lyrics to fit in with local places that are sentimental to the group. All are encouraged to get involved, whether by singing along, making up the lyrics, shaking a set of bells or keeping time with a set of clap sticks. As I quietly sing along I am mesmerized by the looks of delight on the participant's faces. This is a profoundly moving example of Australian community music in action; where a diverse group of people, who are often marginalized from society, are given the opportunity to actively engage with music-making in a dynamic community environment.