Name
Climate consciousness in a global collaborative digital music education project: a world apart or same difference?
Date & Time
Thursday, July 30, 2026, 10:50 AM - 11:20 AM
Description
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2020), represent a call to action for teacher educators to embed climate consciousness in teaching and learning amongst other areas of responsibility. Music education can play a role in helping young people respond to the ongoing climate crisis through the creation of artworks as activism. This paper draws on case study research carried out during an online collaborative digital composing project which we undertook in primary schools in Orkney, Scotland, Melbourne, Australia and Bangkok, Thailand. As music teacher educators, we worked with primary teachers and their classes to facilitate the creation of a collaborative cloud-based video and music project, using Soundtrap for Education, a digital audio workstation (DAW). This presentation will report on the logistics of organising this project on opposite sides of the world, identifying benefits and challenges. We will discuss primary teachers’ skills and confidence in digital music making and creating as well as the knowledge of technology and collaboration developed by the primary teachers involved in the project. We also share perceptions of the impact of global collaboration in the online environment. We examine our experiences of facilitating multiple iterations of a global online creative music and video creation project and share insights that others might draw on. We argue for greater attention to the affordances of digital collaborative music technology tools to facilitate culturally relevant, creative composing projects in primary schools as well as the need to reimagine musical experience, drawing together strands of music, education, and technology as well as global citizenship. We also argue for greater attention in teacher education to build confidence and competence in using digital collaborative music technology tools. Our research suggests that online collaborative composing projects such as this have the potential to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2020), education for sustainability (Østergaard, 2019) and beyond into regenerative practice (Armon, 2021).
Location Name
512C
Full Address
Palais des Congres - Montréal Convention Centre
1001, Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle
Montreal QC H2Z 1H2
Canada
Session Type
Paper Presentation
Presenting Author(s)
Pauline Black, Emily Wilson