Sub-Theme 3.1: About
From the AIRS Milestone Document
Led by Godfrey Baldacchino (UPEI) and Lily Chen-Hafteck (Kean University), researchers will examine singing in the promotion of cross-cultural understanding and the reduction of prejudice through four approaches: (1) extension of Felix Neto’s original quantitative studies in Portugal of a 3-month singing intervention, with the aim of replication and determining long term influences (2) in a more qualitative study within Canada, China, Kenya, and Brazil, providing children in their classroom with four two-to-three-week music-cultural modules from each of the four countries, and tracking the attitudes to these cultures in the short and long term in a multi-year 4-country- site experimental design (3) studying resilience and fragility of songs and singing styles within minority cultures particularly in Islands where several researchers have expertise and connections (4) studying the origin and maintenance of multicultural choirs such as Common Thread as the basis for developing new choirs beginning with such a choir at UPEI.
Return to Theme 3 Group Home