This is a recurring event: View all events in the series “Music Research Seminars”
Abstract
Participatory arts initiatives afford enriched environments for the exploration of modes of being and experiencing, and provide a powerful means of supporting wellbeing through creative engagement. In effect, such initiatives offer alternate worlds or “protected” spaces, separate from mundane pressures.
This presentation features findings from two studies in which participatory arts (multisensory and multimodal) function as cognitive tools in socially engaged mental health research.
The first focuses on two linked multisensory arts projects held in clinical and community settings which used Turkish water marbling (ebru) and musical sound generation in combination.
The second introduces the Participatory Arts Play Framework as a transdisciplinary tool, grounded in enactive cognition. The PP Framework was developed by Professor Nicola Shaughnessy (University of Kent), Dr Ruth Herbert (City St George’s), and Dr Jackie Walduck (Royal Academy of Music) as part of a project investigating neurodiversity and gender through participatory arts. It has been used in different creative contexts (music and drama) with diverse communities (homeless, special needs) as a means of understanding and evaluating creative modes of engagement.
They argue that an increase in the detailed observational study of participatory arts environments – understood as multisensory sites of situated, embodied experience – is merited to enhance understanding of:
- the phenomenology of creative engagement in therapeutic contexts
- benefits arising from the process and artistic outcomes of creative engagement itself, as opposed to the frequent focus of empirical studies on wellbeing outcomes post-participation.
About the speakers
Jackie Walduck is a composer and percussionist whose practice explores improvisation, collaborative composition, and multisensory experience. A City St George’s alumna, she is active as a performance-maker, researcher, and community musician, creating multisensory performances (Miso Kitchen 2020, Diagnosis: Drifting Dreaming Waiting 2021) and site-specific works for Crossness Pumping Station (Cleanse, 2024), The Hot Tin, Faversham (Communion 2022), and Thornham Magna (Sensing Nature, 2017).
In 2025, Jackie was awarded the prestigious Association of British Orchestras' Health and Wellbeing Award for her contribution to music-making with people experiencing homelessness and orchestral musicians—a practice spanning 25 years and reaching over 1,000 participants.
She also received AHRC funding in 2025 to investigate the practice of musical empowerment, leading a practice research team of musicians experiencing homelessness, classical musicians from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra, social care workers, and music psychologist Dr Ruth Herbert.
Jackie joined the Playing A/Part research team in 2021 and continues to develop her research in improvisation, autism, multisensory trancing, and mental health. Her current projects include an edited collection of practice research case studies in composition and improvisation for Routledge (forthcoming 2027). She is a Lecturer in Academic Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and an Honorary Associate there.
Ruth Herbert is a music psychologist and professional pianist. She is Lecturer in Music at City St George’s, University of London, and was previously Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Kent.
Her research interests include:
- Health and wellbeing
- Music education
- Music and consciousness (including ASC and trance)
- Sonic studies
- Music evolutionary psychology
- Ethology and performance psychology
Ruth’s work is informed by ecological approaches to perception and 4E cognition. She has a particular interest in the ontology of autism and multisensory experience. She was Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Playing A/Part: Autistic Girls, Identities and Creativity, and is currently Co-Investigator on CREATE, a UKRI-funded research project applying transdisciplinary understanding to arts-based mental health research.
Her publications include:
- Music and Consciousness II (co-edited, OUP, 2019)
- Everyday Music Listening (monograph, Routledge 2016 [2011])
- Beyond Autistic Stereotypes: Gender, Identity & Experience (co-edited with Nicola Shaughnessy & Emma Williams, OUP, forthcoming 2026)
She has also written journal articles and chapters on topics including arts-based practices and mental health, musical daydreaming, trancing, and cross-cultural musicking and identity.
Ruth has contributed to BBC Radio 4 & 5 features on music and consciousness, music and spiritual wellbeing, and music, food, and multisensory experience.
She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sonic Studies, Music Research Annual, and serves as Associate Editor for Musicae Scientiae.
The Music Research Seminars are hosted by the Department of Performing Arts at City St George’s, University of London and SPARC research centre (Sound Practice and Research at City St George’s). They bring together world-leading artists, practitioners, and scholars in the broad fields of music and sound.
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