Australia’s hidden musicians: education and training in rural and regional areas

ABSTRACT

This article examines the fortunes of music education programs in rural and regional Australia. It argues that the two key national reports on music education across the nation undertaken in 2005 and 2019 have tended to focus on metropolitan and urban settings and formalised school education at the pre-tertiary level at the expense of music education programs in rural and regional areas. In this article, we argue that a more complete picture of music education across Australia – and, indeed, elsewhere – can only be fully assessed when music education outside of formal primary and secondary school education is accounted for. Through extensive interviews with music education stakeholders during COVID, the article highlights the diverse and impactful state of music education in rural and regional Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• regional
• rural
• COVID
• diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from Griffith University’s Grant Development / Collaboration Scheme.

Notes on contributors

Paul Watt

Paul Watt is an Adjunct Professor of Musicology in the University of Adelaide where he is co-director of the Musicology and Ethnomusicology Hub; he is also Director of Research for the Busking Project, Berlin. His research ranges across musical criticism and biography; intellectual, religious and literary history; popular music; busking studies; and music education. His most recent book is Music, Morality and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century Britain (The Boydell Press, 2023).

Ben Green

Ben Green is a Griffith University Postdoctoral Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. He is a cultural sociologist with research interests in live music, social change and cultural policy. Ben is a member of the Regional Music Research Group and co-editor of Popular Music Scenes: Regional and Rural Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Andrea Baker

Andrea Jean Baker is currently a senior lecturer within the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. She widely published in relation to media, gender and sexual violence, urban and music studies. Award-winning author of four books, a government report, more than twenty-five chapters and academic journal articles, she has also co-edited two special journal editions, and is on the Editorial board for the UK academic journal, Journalism Practice.

Andy Bennett

Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. He is a Faculty Fellow of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology, an Adjunct Researcher with the Institute of Sociology, University Porto, and an International Research Fellow of the Finnish Youth Research Network. He is co-founding Editor of the journal DIY, Alternative Cultures and Society (SAGE) and co-founder /co-convenor of the biennial KISMIF (‘Keep it Simple, Make it Fast’) conference dedicated to DIY and alternative cultures.

Paul Long

Paul Long is Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries and Director, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, Monash University. He researches migration, cultural policy and the creative industries and currently leads the Australian Research Council-funded project Mapping Australian Homemade, Amateur & Do-it-Yourself Cultural Economies. He is the co-founding editor of the Journal of Beatles Studies (Liverpool University Press).