Liz Coombes is the course leader of the MA Music Therapy course at the University of South Wales, Newport. Since qualifying as a Music Therapist in 2000 following a BMus degree at Royal Holloway College, University of London, she has specialised in working with children and young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties as well as asylum seekers and refugees. She uses psychodynamic thinking to underpin her work and utilises her considerable experience in community music-making. She has worked on skill-sharing therapeutic music projects since 2009 in Palestine, and in the UK. She has a particular interest in how sharing these skills with non-musicians such as teachers, social workers and carers can enrich their professional practice. She has recently completed her training in Guided Imagery in Music.

We talked about Liz's experience as a community musician, how this links to her music therapy work, what skills music therapists need to develop in training, and working cross-culturally.

Coombes, E. (2011, February). Project Bethlehem-Training educators and health workers in the therapeutic use of music in the West Bank. In Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy (Vol. 11, No. 1).

Coombes, E., & Tombs-Katz, M. (2015). Interactive therapeutic music skill-sharing in the West Bank: An evaluation report of project Beit Sahour. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 9, 67-79.

Professor Gary Ansdell has been a music therapist for thirty years, working mostly in the area of adult mental health in the last decade, and currently in late-life care settings. He has been involved in a wide range of areas of music therapy practice, and in developing the Community Music Therapy movement. Gary has also been active in training and research, developing new Masters and PhD programmes for Nordoff Robbins, where he was Director of Education (2008-15). He has published widely in the areas of music therapy and music and health and is author/co-author of seven books on music therapy, the latest of which include How Music Helps: In Music Therapy & Everyday Life (2014) and with Tia DeNora Musical Pathways in Recovery: Community Music Therapy & Mental Wellbeing (2016). His longterm collaboration with the music sociologist Tia DeNora has led to their joint editorship of the new book series Music and Change for Ashgate Publishers.

Gary currently works as an independent music therapy practitioner, consultant and scholar, and is an Associate of Nordoff Robbins, UK, where he is Convenor of the MPhil/PhD programme. He is also an honorary Professor in the department of sociology, philosophy and anthropology at Exeter University and Adjunct Professor in Music Therapy at the University of Limerick.

Gary talks about Mercédès Pavlicevic in this interview. He also talks about different approaches to music therapy, and we address some controversies, including Gary's much discussed concept of the 'consensus model' in music therapy, and the perceived dichotomy between music-centred and psychodynamic music therapy.

Luke talks to Julie Whelan, the CEO of Nordoff Robbins.

Julie has had extensive experience of senior roles in education, local authority services, government and the charity sector.

Her most recent roles were as founding CEO of the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust and in her seven years there she established the charity, it was recognised with a charity excellence award and it supported over 200,000 young people with mentoring programmes.

She joined Nordoff Robbins in 2015 and since her arrival the charity has already met its overarching goal to increase by 100% the number of people it can support with its life-changing music therapy. Julie is now leading the trustees and executive team into the next strategic planning process for 2019 -2024.

In this interview Julie talks about some of the challenges she has faced in her new role, her personal perspectives on the music therapy profession, the importance of accountability, and lots more.

Josephine Davies is a jazz saxophonist, composer, existential psychotherapist and lecturer. She studied classical and jazz at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and more recently trained at Regents's University and the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. Though she is not a music therapist, Josephine is greatly interested in how therapies of all orientations can help people to access and express their creativity in their own unique ways. She is also deeply influenced by Japanese and Buddhist philosophies that celebrate the qualities of imperfection, impermanence and unity. Marrying these with various existential ideas underpins her view of the person, creative outlook, and more general lifestyle.

You can still read Josephine's Facebook post, which we refer to during the interview, and you can find more examples of her recorded work, as well as gig listings, on her website.

Luke talks to Daniel Thomas about his process of moving from being a music therapist into running an arts therapy business. This includes to interesting discussion on the nature of 'brands', as well as reflections on how we communicate the subtle nuances fo therapeutic work to other professionals.

Daniel qualified as a music therapist in 2002. His past clinical work focused on children and families, especially supporting attachment, bonding and resilience. Daniel has worked in prisons, mental health settings and in special and mainstream schools with children with a range of brain injuries and other conditions He certified in the APCI assessment in 2014, and as a Neurologic Music Therapist in 2017. He is also the Joint Managing Director of Chroma. Daniel is passionate about the business of arts therapies, believing that the economics of therapy is as important an ethical issue for therapists as is the quality of their practice. Working with Dr Vicky Abad, and colleagues from around the world including Aalborg University, Denmark and Lesley University, USA, Daniel co-authored and edited "The Economics of Therapy" published by JKP.

Luke talks to Helen Odell-Miller about music therapy and psychoanalysis, group work in adult mental health settings, research into music therapy and dementia, and many other things.

Dr Helen Odell-Miller OBE is a Professor of Music Therapy, and Director of the Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Helen has lectured widely, and has been a keynote speaker at many national and international conferences in Europe, Australia, Asia and the USA. She has worked with parliament and the government advising on music therapy. Most recently she was one of the Commissioners for the Music and Dementia Strategy in the UK, produced by the International Longevity Centre, and launched at the House of Lords in January 2018: What would life be? Without a Song or Dance, What are We?

Helen is co-editor and an author for the books Supervision of Music Therapy (Jessica Kingsley 2009), Forensic Music Therapy (Routledge 2013) and Collaboration and Assistance in Music Therapy Practice (2017). She has published widely in national and international peer reviewed journals and authored many book chapters. She is a pianist, violinist, and a singer in Cambridge Voices chamber choir.

References:

Odell-Miller, H., 2001. Music therapy and its relationship to psychoanalysis. Where analysis meets the arts, pp.127-152.

Wilson, S. ed., 2017. Music—Psychoanalysis—Musicology. Routledge.

Episode 13 is Luke's interview with Claire Flower. Claire trained as a music therapist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Over the years she has worked in a wide range of settings, as well as running a supervision practice, teaching and examining. She currently works within the Music Therapy team in the Child Development Service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, where she is joint team lead with Juliet Wood. At present, she is completing her doctoral studies at Nordoff-Robbins. Her practice-led study is an investigation of ways of working with children and parents in a healthcare context.

References:

Bortoft, H. (2012) Taking Appearances Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought. Edinburgh, Floris Books.

Flower, C., 2014. Music therapy trios with child, parent and therapist: A preliminary qualitative single case study. Psychology of Music, 42(6), pp.839-845.

Blogs:

http://musictherapyblog.co.uk/

https://www.musiconmymind.co.uk/

http://dariuszgalasinski.com/blog/

http://jazztoad.blogspot.co.uk/

In episode 12, which coincides with World Music Therapy Day, Luke Annesley talks to Becky White. Becky teaches clinical improvisation at the University of South Wales and works as an associate lecturer in music therapy at the University of the West of England. She is undertaking PhD research into learning experiences through improvisation of music and music therapy students. The study is arts based, employing qualitative phenomenological interviews combined with improvisations and transcribed with hand-drawn graphic scores. She is a member of the inter-model and inter-disciplinary improvisation research network Concurrent, based at the University of Edinburgh.

During this interview Becky refers to a number of papers, including her recent Concurrent study on Voices, which is here. She also references the following:

Ferrara, L. (1984) Phenomenology as a Tool for Musical Analysis. The Musical Quarterly, 70(3), pp. 355-373.

Wilson, G.B., and MacDonald, R.A. (2016) Musical choices during group free improvisation: A qualitative psychological investigation. Psychology of Music, 44(5), pp. 1029 - 1043.

Episode 11 is the recording of the panel discussion from the BAMT AGM in October 2017. The panel members were Joy Gravestock, Anna Maratos, Simon Procter, Alexia Quin and Ben Saul, bringing experience from freelance work, the third sector, and the NHS. The discussion, chaired by Luke Annesley in front of an audience of BAMT members, encompassed rates of pay, surviving in the 'age of austerity' and communicating constructively with commissioners and funders. The audience participated fully in the developing conversation.

In episode 10 Luke talks to Dr Stella Compton Dickinson about working in forensic settings. Stella is a London-based music therapist, professional oboist, lecturer, UK Council for Psychotherapy registered Cognitive Analytic Therapist and accredited supervisor. She is author of The Clinician's Guide to Forensic Music Therapy (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) and she has her own private practice and twenty years' experience in the National Health Service as a clinician, Head of Arts Therapies and Clinical Research Lead. Her research was awarded the 2016 Ruskin Medal for the most impactful doctoral research. Stella's PhD thesis can be found here, and her website is here.