Transforming Space – Cultivating the Imagination and Promoting Pedagogic Change

A meaningful music education engages the musical imagination, musical intellect, musical creativity, and musical performance in ways that change perceptions about music, the role of the arts in the community, and the nature of the community itself. The authors suggest tenets of critical pedagogy as an appropriate theoretical framework to view music education, because it includes conversation and dialogue about music and society, changing perceptions and misperceptions about musical genres, and, by committing to a social justice agenda, it offers empowerment and resists the hegemonic influences that confound the politics of musicking.

Transforming Space, a collaborative project to study, perform, teach, and present Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning Anthracite Fields was the focus of this project. The musical composition describes the plight of 19^th century coal miners in the Anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. While principally a work for choir, the piece integrates video, dance, and a contemporary chamber ensemble.

Central to the focus of the project was performing the music at Roebling Wire Factory located in Trenton, a depressed urban center in central New Jersey. Modifying the space with theatrical lighting, acoustical panels, microphones to enhance sound, and including food trucks and pre-concert activities, transformed the now empty warehouse into a community concert venue.

Children from underserved populations attended a matinee performance, and returned to their schools to engage their musical imagination and musical creativity to incorporate the political and social themes of the musical text, to transform a space in their own school buildings into one that would be aesthetically and artistically significant. Music education students at Westminster Choir College developed materials to prepare tertiary school children to engage, understand and be inspired by the experience. Cross curricular connections included social studies, science, architecture, and visual art. Data for assessment included student journals and teacher reflections that the authors coded. As results, four themes emerged that were key 21^st century skills, and consistent with ideals of critical pedagogy. They were: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. Music teachers, unfamiliar with critical pedagogy as a lens to view teaching and learning. The authors concluded that a curriculum for music education framed in tenets of critical pedagogy may foster a critical consciousness that acknowledged the importance of community engagement and social justice.