What did the interviews tell us about working together towards Music for Health in Morecambe?

to Wellbeing Organisation and NHS service aims. It appears to be important to evidence value concerning these aims and advocate for the project’s sustainability. However, evidence believed to be valuable was not evidence currently collected within the project, such as the music sessions’ role in improving or targeting specific health concerns. However, the experiences used to communicate their perceived possible impacts drew our attention. There also appeared to be no shared conceptualisation of what ‘health’ means in the context of this partnership, which had implications for how the project’s value was understood.

Plural meaning and knowledge-exchange – there was a consistent narrative across the interviews that it was important to experience the music groups first-hand to understand their value. It was also evident that partnerpractitioners in the project were learning from the skills and perspectives of each other. One of the project’s strengths is how the partnership supports practice-based training and development and knowledge-exchange. This appeared to be informing approaches to practice beyond the project. It also appeared to influenced how partner-practitioners understood each other’s working contexts, despite no shared conceptualisation of health.

The strategic role of music leaders – music leaders in the project did not regard their role as strategic or influencing the project’s future design and development. However, other interviewees expressed clearly, the unique and influential role that music leaders play. Similarly, when detailing their experiences of working in partnership, music leaders recalled situations that appeared to be influential and correlate with the positive experiences partner-practitioners had observed of their role. Similarly to the ‘music and value as healthy living’ theme, how these experiences were communicated were of interest to the ICCM research team.

Each of the four themes emerging from the interview analysis raised important issues and meaningful learning that spoke to both sectoral and individual perceptions of value for the project and reinforced it as a situated practice that partner-practitioners felt passionate about. A summary of the data informing these themes can be viewed in Table 1 (overleaf).

What did the interviews tell us about working together towards Music for Health in Morecambe?

We analysed findings from the interview in response to our research questions:

• What are the challenges associated with arts and health partnerships in

Morecambe?

• How does More Music work as a cultural leader towards developing partnerships within health settings?

• How do More Music and their health partners communicate the potential value music might have within a health setting?

• What is needed to ensure the project remains relevant and sustainable?

“A challenge in this project that presented through the interviews was a distinction between valued experiences and valued evidence.”

Partnership and Project Sustainability Music and Value as Healthy Living Plural meaning and knowledge-exchange The strategic influence of music leaders

There are distinctions between partnership groups of whether scaling up is given more importance than localised sustained activities.

All three music groups’ plug a gap’ by ‘plugging into’ existing services. This is understood as collective energy, attachment in provisions and multiway exchange of values.

There is motivation to be part of the future sustainability of the project, but limited examples of how the partnership might resource this. Important to ‘prove’ value with evidence for music and health and must be advocated. What is regarded as valuable evidence is not currently collected in the project

Music-health paradox: Music is unquestionably good for people’s health, and the wellbeing/social context of music can contribute to unhealthy living

To understand why it’s valuable, you need to experience it, firsthand

The project is viewed as a More Music project that partners are invited into. This may contribute to distinctions between how More Music and their partners view the project’s future developments. Value of the project presented as an instrumental/intrinsic binary, yet project is expressed holistically, valued as part of people’s lives. Music leaders in the session are one of the most important aspects of the project’s success.

There is not a shared conceptualisation of ‘health’

More Music workforce have a strong sense of partner priorities through which perceptions of value appear to be positioned

Knowledge-exchange beyond the delivery of the project is enhancing how roles are understood. Music leaders do not believe their role is strategic or informs project developments.

Everyone in the project identifies as musical, and the skills, qualities and influence of the workforce have a vital role to play.

When music leaders model musical experience beyond the music sessions, they appear to influence understandings and actions for how the project may be valued to challenge health inequalities.

A challenge in this project that presented through the interviews was a distinction between valued experiences and valued evidence. Assumptions about sectoral values and a strategic requirement to produce particular kinds of evidence, often quantitative in nature, appeared to underserve the rich learning that comes from taking part. Addressing this may require the partnership to collectively consider how the projects are communicating aims, and reflect on how it understands value and why. This includes a need to strategically think about the partnership’s long-term aims and what partner roles can be. Finally, considering how health is understood collectively and what evidence is sought (and why) is needed, to develop as a relevant and sustainable project. The interviews suggested to us that there were four ways that Music for Health in Morecambe was being commonly understood and communicated, which resonated across the four themes:

As a partnership mythology – there were assumptions about the current and future roles that partners would play, particularly regarding resourcing the project in future. This included partner aims within the project and that these may be different from each other. The contrast also appeared: that partner-practitioners unquestionably wanted the same things for the project, despite their distinctly different sectoral needs. Although there are differences, which is expected of