Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance

The Alliance grew from the AHRC-funded Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network (2023-25), which collaboratively addressed three key questions: What musical practices could be used to support parents in a wide range of contexts? How can music practitioners working in this area be supported and cared for? How can music be implemented as a sustainable part of parental wellbeing practices and policies? The complexity of these questions and who they involve necessitated the need for a collaborative approach, and our Network brought together over 270 people, from around the globe, working at the intersection of music and parental wellbeing to think across and between disciplinary and conceptual boundaries.

Through our collaborative work, we set the mission for our new Alliance:

SHAPE mission – the Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance aims to share research resources, convene knowledge exchange opportunities, develop shared understandings of what counts as robust evidence through interdisciplinary methods, and seek and advocate for funding for the field.

SUPPORT mission – the Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance aims to establish and facilitate a community of practice, work towards offering carefully-tailored training and capacity building opportunities for professionals, advance understanding of what constitutes high quality practice in the field, and share practice resources.

SHARE mission – the Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance aims to advocate where appropriate for the power of music in supporting parental wellbeing, develop guidelines for parents and those who work with parents, proactively build relationships with pivotal policy makers and influencers nationally and internationally, synthesise key findings to increase the impact of research, and involve parents and practitioners as crucial drivers in all this work.

The Alliance’s vision and mission are set out in our freely-available position paper in Music and Science. All those interested are welcomed to join the Alliance, via the website listed below.