Twelve students in Grades 7 and 8 from Minnekhada Middle School joined RYME researchers and their Music Teacher and SFU doctoral candidate David Erickson for an extracurricular collaborative project that explored why music matters. Eight sessions were spent on developing student-led participatory action research projects that explored the students’ own ideas about why the arts matter and what they felt were important messages for other young people to know about arts engagement. One project involved three dancers choreographing a dance with another student playing the piano to support them. They wanted to inspire other dancers and musicians to believe in themselves and to keep working to improve and overcome any barriers or obstacles. Another group of students interviewed a local rock band about what influenced them to become musicians and how to start and keep a band going. They also wanted learn about the process that the band members went through to write their own songs. A third group adopted a documentary film approach and videotaped students, teachers, and parents that they came across in the corridors of the school about why music matters to them. Other groups worked on recording their own songs to include in a video about why music matters for the school YouTube site (http://www.youtube.com/user/MinnekhadaMiddle).
The students presented their projects to senior administrators at the school and made an appeal and were promised continued support for the arts in their school. The students also visited the Faculty of Education at SFU where they joined a music education class for students in teacher education. In preparation for this visit, the Minnekhada students developed their own questions and interviewed the SFU students about why music matters to them. The Minnekhada students also presented a video of their projects and discussed the learning and leadership opportunities that they experienced through their involvement in the project.