Music scholarship, particularly since the 1980s, has recognised that music and musical practices both reflect and affect the social and cultural contexts and configurations in which they exist. Indeed, musicians themselves, from all periods and places, have sought to use music to influence the world around them and to use non-musical ideas to shape the music that they make. Similarly, non-musicians have recognised the power, affect and influence that can arise from deploying music in a wide range of contexts, both as a primary point of focus and as an accompaniment to other activities and situations. This project seeks to understand the impact of music and musical practice from the perspective of the participants and their own interpretations of what is happening, through outsiders looking in with their own, different perspective, and through the process of active experimentation. These three approaches can be summarised as:

• Ethnographic or ‘emic’ studies of musical practice that explore how the participants, both on the production and consumption sides, understand, use and are influenced by the musical practices that they engage in.
• Studies that aim to take a more ‘etic’ or empirical approach to understanding those practices, such as statistical, sociological, psychological or economic projects.
• Studies that take an activist approach: that seek to understand what is possible and desirable by producing real-world change and evaluating the results.