Orchestral Musicians' Community Engagement as a Means for Flourishing: A Phenomenological Study

Recent decades have witnessed a rapid expansion of community music projects, and findings have highlighted their potential to build important psychological resources such as positive emotions, a sense of accomplishment, engagement, purpose and social skills. Despite the collaborative nature of this type of work, the experiences of the musicians who facilitate it remain largely undocumented. This study emerged from two innovative initiatives that brought together primary school children and musicians from two of London's major orchestras (London Philharmonic Orchestra and London Contemporary Orchestra) to work together to prepare and perform new music written by emerging composers. The aim was to investigate musicians' lived experiences of community engagement through these collaborations. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was adopted as the research framework. Fifteen musicians (six females, nine males), ranging from 26 to 57 years of age, took part in one-to-one semi-structured interviews after experiencing a month of community-based work with the children. Data analyses revealed the experience of community engagement to be accounted for through three supraordinate themes, encapsulating 12 subordinate themes: (1) identity development (personal and collective), (2) well-being (positive emotions, engagement, accomplishment, purpose and social contribution) and (3) skill development (personal, interpersonal, musical, teaching and creativity). The role of community engagement in fostering professional orchestral musicians' mental health is discussed.