We support a wide variety of research initiatives exploring the connections among music, sound, and society in Canada. We are especially interested in projects that engage and collaborate with community partners and that explore practice-based research methodologies.

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LiSTEN: Listening to Social Transformation through Engagement Network

Listening to Social Transformation through Engagement Network explores the complex relationship between listening and social transformation. Creative practices (including music, sound arts, and recording; digital art/creative technologies; communications media; and film) offer a rich experiential ground for understanding, critiquing, and deploying listening as a crucial strategy, skill, technique, and force to address the competing cross currents of social transformation that mark Canadian society and Canada-in-the-world.
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Expanding the Music Circle through Networked Improvisation

Through a partnership with the Lotus Centre for Special Music Education, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Sonshine Community Inclusion Centre, Expanding the Music Circle (2021-23) explored how improvisation can bridge difference and distance to create an integrated all-abilities approach to musicking.
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Resonance: Towards a Community-Engaged Model of Research-Creation

The aim of the Resonance Project (2020-2023) is to develop an innovative community-engaged model of research-creation while exploring the resonances between music and visual art. Diverse musicians (from the 2SLGBTQIA+ and Deaf communities) were invited to co-create music in response to two exhibitions at the Carleton University Art Gallery. Through ethnography, performance, and filmmaking we explored and documented the ethics of collaboration.
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Re-imagining the Global Music Ensemble

Reimagining the Global Music Ensemble (RGME) (2021-2023) seeks to broaden the artistic vision and leadership of Carleton’s West African Rhythm Ensemble, motivated by social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter and anti-colonialism. This teaching and learning project asks: What is a responsible model for a global music ensemble in post-secondary music studies now?