Agency and creative problem-solving through music therapy with unemployed women

Abstract

South Africa faces a significant unemployment crisis. The largest percentage of those unemployed are young Black females and the issues they face are complex and pervasive. There is extremely limited research with this population looking at creative ways to solve these difficult problems and enhance their perceived sense of agency within a South African context. In this qualitative study, I invited young women at a shelter in Johannesburg to participate in a music therapy process centred around the topics of creative problem-solving and agency regarding the social issues relevant to them. This was a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study and consisted of eight music therapy sessions with varying membership, where 15 women participated in total. Together (through group members’ articulation of what was meaningful, combined with my interpretation of what they had said), we developed the following findings: group members could more effectively appropriate the affordances of music as their understanding of music’s helpfulness grew; the beneficial byproducts of a music therapy process can create intention for action; they developed their understanding of how they could benefit from connection to community; awareness of community systems is crucial to understand power to act; and the experience of agency is a dynamic one. These insights show the importance of a contextually situated approach to work in these spaces and the richness of the subjective insights that emerged through the PAR process. Participants’ articulation of their experience has implications for music therapists working in these contexts, researchers, and non-profit organisations.