Mapping the Music of Migration Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mapping the Music of Migration

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

‘Mapping the Music of Migration’ (MaMuMi) is a two-year pan-European, Erasmus+ musical inheritance project focused on talking about music and song as a tool for intercultural competency. It has 7 partners (2 x HE and 5 x NGOs) in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK and involves the collection, editing and uploading of ‘Song Stories’, stories about music to an interactive app. These stories focus on ‘inheritance tracks’; the songs or music that migrants have inherited, the discussion of which acts as a platform for diversity awareness in dedicated MaMuMi ‘Song Worlds’ Workshops’.

The project is driven by the principle that innovative training spaces form part of broader integration strategies that can actively help tackle issues of diversity and social inclusion common across the EU. The project moves from a review of theory and practice in the field of music as a tool for integration, to facilitating a user guide that can be deployed by NGOs in the sector, to an audio collection of case studies from the workshop and then finally, an interactive map which places each migrant’s story of the music they have inherited on a point of beginning and traces its journey across Europe. The project aims to use storytelling about music as a positive mechanism to counter negative stereotype (Salazar, 2010) and to open up enabling enunciative spaces. As such, it is firmly in line with the expectations of its commissioning funding body, the EU.

MaMuMi emerges from two interrelated contexts, 1) previous and current Erasmus+ funded projects and 2) academic work on music, inheritance and migration. 1) UOG has led a successful digital storytelling project (MYSTY) which introduced innovative and easily transferable learning methodologies to schools to increase intercultural competence. It is also currently involved in MEDLIT, a two year project tasked with building an media literacy app for low-skilled migrant women. Both of these projects act as foundation to MaMuMi in their a) methodological innovation and b) aim to tackle issues around migration in a positive and practical way. Both projects work to develop diversity awareness and social cohesion and MaMuMi is continuing this.

It has three objectives: 1) to give migrants a space where they can use music to tell their song stories and so bolster self-esteem and importance in a new or unwelcome environment. 2) to offer staff working in NGOs with migrants a tool (the MaMuMi workshop) which will enable deeper understanding of their clients and 3) the Music Migration Map will be a free to use interactive app that will evidence migrant stories and journeys.

There are seven partners on MaMuMi. Five of these are organisations working closely with migrants. We envisage that each organisation will be working on the project workshops and audio collection themselves and will cascade these workshops out to their networks. It can reasonably be estimated on evidence from past projects that the workshop methodology, audio collection and app will be cascaded to 250 trainers via each organisation’s networks.

There are a number of outputs on the MaMuMi project. IO1 is a methodological framework. IO2 is the MaMuMi Music Workshops, where participants will be trained in the Song Stories method. IO3 is the MaMuMi Audio Collection, where participants will upload stories to the online archive (as part of the MaMuMi website). IO4 is the MaMuMi Music Migration Map, where individual song stories (audio and clips of music) will be added to a virtual map. IO5 is a Briefing Paper detailing the project and its journey.

The results of MaMuMi are 1) increased understanding of the histories and emotional pasts of migrants 2) increased understanding for migrants of NGOs’ pasts (as trainers will be invited to partake in the workshops too, providing their own song stories – although these will not be mapped on the app). 3) Visibility of specific migration journeys narrated by migrants themselves via the MaMuMi method of talking about song.

Project Website

https://mamumi.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 245297,95 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE & Country: UK

Project Partners

• HOGSKOLEN I INNLANDET
• CENTRO PER LO SVILUPPO CREATIVO DANILO DOLCI
• ASOCIACION CAMINOS – ASOCIACION PARA EL INTERCAMBIO EDUCACION Y DESARROLLO SOCIAL
• CSI CENTER FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION LTD
• KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU
• SDRUDZENIE ZNAM I MOGA