Community music as health promotion: equity-related insights from urban context in Australia

Health promotion researchers and practitioners the world over are grappling with how to tackle growing health inequity. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (Ottawa Charter) provides a framework for addressing inequity from an intersectoral, strengths-based, and social justice approach; yet this framework continues to be underutilized. Similarly, evidence suggests creative arts can support positive health and well-being but the potential for the arts to contribute to efforts addressing health inequity is underexplored. In this community-embedded, qualitative case study, we investigate the contribution community-centred music making can have across the five health promotion action areas outlined in the Ottawa Charter. Findings from this study highlight the potential for community music to contribute to personal skill development in relation to maintaining a healthy and well life and engaging in equity-focussed change. Community music can create supportive environments through fostering social connections and activating community spaces. Community music can be a powerful means of strengthening community action by bringing communities together around local issues and activism. When integrated into social services, community music can support the re-orienting of health services by connecting people with services and by encouraging people to share health-related knowledge and resources. Finally, our findings demonstrate that community music can shape public opinion and be a conduit to reach people in positions of power in ways that have the potential to influence healthy public policy. This study demonstrates that health promotion researchers and practitioners can and should look to communities' cultural and creative assets in our efforts towards health equity.