SPARC members Dr Fay Hield and Dr Sarah Price have a new paper out in the International Journal of Traditional Arts exploring the experiences of folk music audiences: ‘I realised it was the same song’: Familiarisation, assimilation and making meaning with new folk music. Fay and Sarah followed a group of listeners …
On 29th June, SPARC and the Urban Institute hosted a one-day, interdisciplinary symposium, convening a gathering of researchers and practitioners from a broad spectrum of backgrounds. SPARC research fellow Dr Michael Bonshor has written the following reflective report on the day – read it here!
The beneficial effects of music on the health and well-being of participants are well known, but what about its effect on local communities? A new report on the impact of music on local communities, authored by SPARC director Professor Stephanie Pitts, is launched today. Working in conjunction with a leading …
We’re excited to see that our Understanding Audiences for Contemporary Arts (UACA) project has been recognised recently by two leading industry publications. You can read the article in Arts Professional (the UK’s arts management journal for industry professionals) here, and read about UACA in The Stage (the world’s longest-running publication for the performing arts industry) here. …
Dr Jonathan Gross (a former post-doctoral research associate at SPARC) has co-authored a new report that calls for ‘everyday creativity’ to be taken seriously. Only 8% of people make regular use of publicly funded art, but every day people are getting creative by making their own versions of culture. Towards Cultural …
SPARC is happy to announce the publication of a new article by Prof. Stephanie Pitts (SPARC Director) and Dr Jonathan Gross in the online journal Arts and the Market: “ ‘Audience exchange’: cultivating peer-to-peer dialogue at unfamiliar arts events” The paper demonstrates the usefulness of the “audience exchange” approach for audience development …
We are delighted to announce that IMR/SPARC Fellow Michael Bonshor’s latest article is out now in Research Studies in Music Education, on the topic of ‘Conductor feedback and the amateur singer: The role of criticism and praise in building choral confidence’. You can access the article here.
A themed special section of the online journal Participations, guest edited by Professor Stephanie E. Pitts (SPARC Director, and UACA Principal Investigator), has just been published. The section’s theme is ‘Knowledge Exchange’ and among the interesting and diverse contributions is an article by Dr Sarah Price (Research Associate, UACA) and Dr Fay Hield, ‘”Old Adam was …
The first issue of Journal of Popular Music Education, edited by Gareth Dylan Smith and Bryan Powell, has launched and includes an article by Lucy Dearn and Stephanie Pitts on ‘(Un)popular music and young audiences’. This work draws on Lucy’s PhD study in which she took young people to classical …
A new paper from SPARC Honorary Research Fellow Dr Michael Bonshor is out now in the International Journal of Community Music. Michael’s research considers the social benefits of choral singing, and the ways in which communities of expertise build up within choirs to increase the confidence of their members. He’s …