We are excited to announce the recent publication of an article Alexia and Makeda wrote last year with Lucy Bolger from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in the online music therapy journal: Voices.

In writing “Valuing Long-Term Intercultural Partnerships: The Sustainable Impact of Skills-Sharing Activities” we want to provide insight into how to implement a large-scale international questionnaire to show how we at Music as Therapy International have always sought to evaluate the lasting impact of our work for those practitioners worldwide who request training from us, participate in our projects and then show dedication to developing their own use of music with children and adults in vulnerable situations as our “Partners”.  The article gives particular focus to what we learned from listening to our partners’ experiences about the effectiveness of music therapy skills-sharing in their communities.

When Lucy was writing another article back in 2023, she noticed there were “…no publications documenting the success of skills-sharing models in fostering sustainable outcomes for communities in international development Music Therapy projects”.  Alexia and Makeda were inspired to respond.  Aside from their pride in our Partners’ achievements, they recognised that writing up the process of undertaking our International Partner Survey back in 2020 and introducing our findings and ways of working into the published music therapy literature could be a way to inform best practice with respect to music therapy projects in international development contexts.  We recognised a need to make sure that the charity’s work and the long-term music practice of our Partners was more visible to others!

We very much hope that our article will prove a valuable resource for music therapists around the world when they consider their role and the contributions they make to promoting music therapy practice in areas of the world where it is less established.

References

Bolger, L. E., Valsangkar, S., Sundar, S., & Murphy, M. (2023). International online collaboration to enhance outcomes in community-based rehabilitation through music:  The Online Music Leadership Program. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v23i2.3729

Mitchell, M., Quin, A., & Bolger, L. E. (2026). Valuing Long-Term Intercultural Partnerships: The Sustainable Impact of Skills-Sharing Activities Examined Through an International Partner Questionnaire. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 26(3). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v26i3.4821