Music: Promoting Health and Creating Community in Healthcare Contexts

Playing live music with people who are ill to promote optimal states of health and well being is as at least as enduring as the written historical record. Alongside burgeoning music therapy developments internationally there is an energetic movement to provide a broader range of arts practices in healthcare. In Ireland this has been progressed over recent years with funded projects developed in a range of hospital sites nationally, reflecting a similar movement in hospital arts in the UK. Potentially tensions could arise between aspirations held for the ongoing development and progress of the profession of music therapy and other arts health initiatives. An inquiring navigation of these potential tensions is undertaken here through presentation of some of the contemporary practices in the use of music to promote health and well being from authors in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the UK, and the USA.