Ethno Research

Millie

Sustainability/Covid-19 project

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Here we learn from Dr Sarah-Jane Gibson about the Sustainability/Covid-19 project.

For the Sustainability/Covid-19 project we’ve been looking at the impact switching to on-line facilitation has had on the Ethno organisation. We’ve seen how some of the events organised by Ethno have encouraged further initiatives within the Ethno Network and also how the opportunity to facilitate on-line teaching sessions have provided Artistic Leaders with new skills to support on-line teaching and given them the opportunity to ‘have a voice’ and share their own cultural practices. Largely, this research has revealed the importance of the artistic leader in curating a successful final Ethno product and the innovativeness of the Ethno Network in adjusting to change.

History Team

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The history project is looking at the impact Ethno has had on the lives of participants who have now aged out of the camps. We have also been creating an online time-line that contains information about all the Ethno-camps that have occurred over the last 30 years. We want to create a historical document online for people interested in the history of Ethno and compliment this with narratives from participants whom we have interviewed.

A video introducing the History project

Ethno on the Road

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Ethno on the Road and Världens Band: Beyond the Ethno Gatherings

Ethno Research is pleased to be able to share its newest publication, a report investigating Ethno on the Road (EoR), one of the reverberations that takes place within the ecosystem of Ethno Sweden.

Ethno on the Road and Världens Band: Beyond the Ethno Gatherings is based on observations and analysis of two performances of EoR 2019. Data also includes a focus group interview with the Världens Band, follow up interviews with a music facilitator and members of EoR 2019 as well as fieldwork conducted in Ethno Sweden 2019.

The report is available in two versions: the full report and an Executive summary. They can also be found in the Publications section of this website. In the video below, Sarah-Jane Gibson introduces the project and its findings.

Foregrounding Otherness, Performing Inclusivity: Negotiating Nation and Self at Ethno World Camps

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At the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting (online, October 22-31, 2020), Laura Risk presented a paper entitled “Foregrounding Otherness, Performing Inclusivity: Negotiating Nation and Self at Ethno World Camps”.

This presentation will draw on fieldwork conducted by Laura and Roger Mantie at Ethno France 2020, and will focus on some of the complexities of Ethno camps as framed in the white paper.

Ethnography as a Research Strategy in Community Music Research

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In this video our researchers Prof. Lee Higgins and Dr. Sarah-Jane Gibson discuss Ethnography as a research strategy in relation to community music.

As an approach to research that has an emphasis on relationships and site-specific fieldwork, ethnography has been one of the key approaches when exploring questions relating to the Ethno gatherings. In this video you will be able to get a broad sense of some of the processes being used by Ethno Research and an illustration of it in practice through engagement with Ethno New Zealand.

Header image: Megan Blennerhassett

Reaching out to the Ethno Community

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Since the publication of our “Framing Ethno-World” white paper in May, the research’s key questions have been refined, and the last quarter has seen the Ethno Research team delve deeper into some of the work packages and focused projects.

You may have noticed our recent flurry of invitations for Ethno alumni to take part in the research. Our History team has been reaching out to connect with people who experienced the earlier camps, in the hope of capturing their memories of Ethno, and their reflections of how it may have impacted them. They have also been gathering data from Ethno Organizers to include in our visual historical timeline of Ethno camps – watch this space! We can’t thank all those organizers enough for offering up their knowledge to populate it, so we can aim to tell as complete a story as possible.

Another project, which invites Ethno Organizers to share a story about their experiences with Ethno via the innovative SenseMaker app, is almost ready to launch. SenseMaker is a research tool with some powerful data analysis possibilities, where participants are involved in interpreting the significance of their own story. The app has been tested, translated into Portuguese, and will be going live to the current Ethno Organizers in the coming days. Organizers will have a choice of which language they respond in – English or Portuguese.

Meanwhile, we’re delighted that two new research assistants, Keegan Manson-Curry and Pedro Tironi, have joined the team in Toronto. The Toronto Team has been exploring web-scraping technologies that analyse social media activity, and they’ve also started to create an Ethno “soundmap” – a geo-tagged map, which will host a collection of audio tracks recorded at Ethno sites. We look forward to sharing this when it’s ready to go public.  

Though they’ve been unable to travel to research conferences this year, our team will be able to engage with those which have moved online. Laura Risk will present a paper entitled “Foregrounding Otherness, Performing Inclusivity: Negotiating Nation and Self at Ethno World Camps” at the Society for Ethnomusicology online conference in October. Her presentation will draw on fieldwork conducted by Laura and Roger Mantie at Ethno France 2020, and will focus on some of the complexities of Ethno camps as framed in the “Framing Ethno-World” white paper. Both Laura and Sarah-Jane Gibson will also present Ethno-related papers at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology one-day online conference in October.

Looking to the future, we’re beginning to make plans for two events of our own, to be held in 2021. The first event will share the research with an Ethno audience, coinciding with EthnoFest, while the second will share all Ethno Research’s findings at the end of the 3-year project.