In these first 4 months of the project I have been laying the foundations for the research.
It is so interesting to see so much learning in unexpected topics have emerged so far. I guess this is one of the beautiful things about practice-based and participatory research.
From the call to women participants, I was questioned who I meant by “women”. Did I mean self-identified women (for example, including trans-women)? How about non-binary people?
This urged a deeper reflection about inclusion, diversity, feminism, and to find out about intersectional feminism. Also, about how to develop a truly inclusive practice, but still keep the initial vision of the space that we want to create.
Then, a professor in Brazil, who is also a dear friend, when he saw about my project, he invited me to give a talk in his series of seminars about decolonisation in the musical thinking.
Honestly, I had not thought about tackling decolonisation issues in my research, just because I really didn’t know about the concept of decolonisation.
I now see that indeed the proposal of my research can lead to decolonisation reflections. IF this is intentional.
Sure I shall learn more about decolonisation, and seek to contribute to this process through this and future research.
Then, when I put the first calls for participants, I had a nice surprise: many pianists answered the call!
The initial idea of the project was for me to have the pianist role, and to work with audiences.
But, now, having several performers, that makes the work so much richer! We can talk about experiences of performers AND audiences in this digital-remote-participatory context, and really think about the blurring of roles.
Can’t wait to even more great learnings and surprises that this project will bring!