Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network

The Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network fosters novel, international, and interdisciplinary collaborations to explore the role of music in supporting parental wellbeing. Now is the time to develop this network for three reasons. First, parental wellbeing is suffering in the United Kingdom and beyond, exacerbated by factors such as health inequalities, austerity, and COVID-19. Second, while music is increasingly evidenced as playing a role in supporting parental wellbeing, the existing evidence tends to focus on birth and very early years parenting, with work required to build on these foundations to address how music (broadly defined and including all genres) supports parenting more widely. Third, current music practices with parents are typically in small, local pockets, and in many cases cannot be sustained long-term because of funding constraints. This is, in part, because of a translational gap between practice and research, on one hand, and policy and implementation, on the other. There is significant appetite from diverse stakeholders to bridge this gap and develop the nascent field through collaborative networking that advances knowledge and practice.

The network will collaboratively address three key questions, focusing on (1) what musical practices could be used to support parents in a wide range of contexts, (2) how music practitioners working in the field of parental wellbeing can be supported and cared for, and (3) how music can be implemented as a sustainable part of parental wellbeing practices and policies. The complexity and multiplicity of these questions and who they involve necessitates the need for a collaborative approach. The novelty of this network therefore lies in addressing these questions by bringing together people working at the intersection of music and parental wellbeing, to work across and between disciplinary and conceptual boundaries. This will be achieved through a series of three online and hybrid events based on the idea of a World Café where participants from music leadership/facilitation, music therapy, ethnomusicology, social prescribing, mental health (including lived experience), perinatal psychiatry, and policy engage in a series of conversations and shared learning stimulated by invited provocations from diverse perspectives.

Network activities will benefit professionals working with parents to support their wellbeing (such as music facilitators/leaders, community musicians, music therapists, health visitors, midwives, and perinatal psychologists and psychiatrists), parents, and academics from wide-ranging disciplines. In addition to network events, stakeholders will benefit from an online resource centre that will disseminate the new knowledge generated by the network. This will include a series of short, animated, sub-titled films, commissioned to capture and disseminate the outcomes of the three events; a resource bank, built during the period of network funding, showcasing short exemplars of practice and/or research in the field; an agenda article and accompanying policy briefing that lays out progress to date and the key questions and policy implications needed to advance the field; and launch of a new Alliance for Music and Parental Wellbeing that will significantly advance the field through raising awareness, facilitating ongoing collaborations, and hosting network outputs. The foundations for the Alliance will be laid during the network funding and it will be maintained post-grant by the PI and CI to ensure sustainability of the network's activities.