Music is never only about sound; it is deeply entangled with identity, belonging, and the ways in which people shape their lives and communities. This panel, Shaping lives through musical stories: reframing music and identities as touchstones for life choices and placemaking, explores how individuals’ relationships with music and musical instruments inform their trajectories of personal growth, professional pathways, and community connections. Through the lenses of identity, the panel examines the intersections and entanglements of musicians, music, education, and wellbeing within a range of Australian contexts. Drawing upon a range of methods, including interviews, song-lyric analyses, participant observation through fieldwork, and a critical literature review, this panel investigates these intersections across varied contexts, ranging from rural communities, educational settings, to professional environments.To begin with, the panel participants introduce the topic drawing on current debates about music’s role in sustaining identity, supporting flourishing, and enabling placemaking. Three concise presentations then outline multiple contexts where these concepts can be found.The panel focuses on the professional and communal. The first paper examines music teachers’ identities and their relationships with music as a strategy for addressing professional burnout, highlighting the importance of reconnecting with one’s musical self. Analysis of teacher-created song lyrics and participant’s interviews about the process reveal how teachers can reframe their perceptions of their careers, and how central music can be in this process. The second paper investigates the role of music education in bridging motivations for participation in community music. Through a critical review of the literature, it considers how greater clarity in terminology can deepen our understanding of what motivates initial participation, and in turn, asks how formal and informal learning might support lifelong engagement and strengthen the conditions for sustained involvement. The final paper examines how rural communities sustain musical activity amid the spatial challenges of remoteness, how limitations in resources and infrastructure are understood as consequences of distance, and how attachments to place and identity, nonetheless, shape community responses to these constraints.Following the individual presentations, the panel moves into a roundtable discussion with the audience. Here we will draw together resonances and interwoven threads across the papers, asking how identities, places, and spaces might be understood as touchstones for flourishing lives and communities. Themes of relationality—with people, with place—will serve as a lens for exploring trajectories towards a life with music. The roundtable will also look forward, inviting participants to consider how research at the intersections of music, identity, and community might be advanced.Collectively, this panel positions music and musical stories as lived practices that shape choices, sustain wellbeing, and anchor belonging in an ever-shifting world.Structure:Introduction to the Symposium: 10 minutes10 minute presentations (X5):Paper 3: Music teachers using creativity and music to reconsider teacher identity and career futures.Paper 4: Bridging motivations and participation in community music: The role of music education in shaping identities and lives in community musicPaper 5: Maintaining music in rural communities: the role of place and identity in confronting local challenges30 minute Roundtable discussion with audience on resonances, intertwining themes and how to progress research at the intersections of music, identities, communities (and flourishing)