Music Therapy with Young People in Schools: After the Black Saturday Fires

Abstract

The Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 resulted in the largest loss of life as the consequence of a natural disaster recorded in Australian history.  The community music therapy project described in this paper took place in a secondary school affected by the fires six months later.  Three groups of young men and women participated in ten weeks of music therapy groups where they were empowered to choose the content and focus of sessions.  Each young person had been impacted in some way by the fires and this was expressed either through improvisations, song writing or song sharing, resulting in a sense of relief.  Although it was important that other group members understood the impact of the bu..