Final Report - 2023. A Community Music Approach to Collaborative Sonic Spaces in WebXR

The purpose of this project is to introduce extended reality (XR) practices for music group improvisation to a selected group of students from Community Music Schools of Toronto (CMST), and to collaborate on a multiplayer virtual reality (VR) prototype with the students as co-creators. Our project allows for participatory, collaborative, and co-creative interactions that are vital to developing skills in music creation and learning music concepts. Our main intention is to increase digital literacy and accessibility of emerging media and music for youth aged 10-17 years old in Canada, and add virtual reality to the music curriculum at the Community Music Schools of Toronto.

More concretely, our participatory research-creation project was conducted with The Senior Jam Class at CMST in the spring term 2023. The class was composed of five students from 13 to 15 years-olds, whose main focus was to learn to jam together. The class itself was headed by Allison Cameron, who is a professional composer, performer and improvising musician in Toronto. She has a long standing career in improvising and performing on electronic keyboards, ukulele, banjo, piano, mini amplifiers, radios, crackle boxes, cassette tapes, miscellaneous objects and toys. It was crucial for us that we integrate the VR project as much as possible within these improvising practices and the class curriculum in discussions with Ms Cameron, who also participated in our workshops together with her teaching assistant Jevoy Jennings. Thanks to their welcoming approach, we were able to create a safe and collaborative space while also being able to share knowledge and different music practices among ourselves.

We considered inclusivity and accessibility through the practice of co-creation with the students (including them in all of the project phases - from ideation to prototyping). We provided them with an environment for creating music that differs from traditional musical instrument performance and leverages their skills in listening, improvisation, empathy, and imagination, all core principles of collaborative group music making.