A University of Alberta researcher is investigating how collective music-making can work as a climate change adaptation strategy.
"Music has great potential - at an individual and a community level - to support mental health, help us process complex feelings of grief, and combat anxiety," says Hannah Bayne, a PhD candidate in the University of Alberta's School of Public Health.
Five per cent of Canadian youth have climate anxiety and 95 per cent experience at least mild levels of worry about climate change, she notes.
Bayne is collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on how musical collaborations such as writing songs, singing, and performing together can help reduce unpleasant emotions around climate change and inspire action, especially for young people.
"'Music-making supports social connectedness and increases our capacity for compassion, empathy and altruism,'" Bayne says. "It also increases our feelings of self-efficacy, which is critical in climate action because if we don't feel the actions we take will have an impact, we won't take them."
Today, Bayne released a folk album called Tuning In to Climate Change, based on a concert presented last fall at Edmonton's Yardbird Suite. All of the songs were written and performed by Western Canadian folk musicians as part of her community-based, participatory research project.
In the spring she helped stage a concert by the Edmonton Young Voices choir, where the children sang about climate change, including an original composition by Sheila Wright entitled "Pale Blue Dot," named after a famed photograph of Earth taken from space and Carl Sagan's book of the same name.
Bayne, who sang in the choir when she was younger, explains the concert was a way to participate in the worldwide climate choir movement that got its start in England.
Her undergraduate studies included a bachelor of science in psychology with a minor in music, and her research is inspired by her own struggle with climate anxiety.
"I'm terrified that we're not taking the action that we need, and I often feel hopeless about the really big scale of the issue," she says. "At the same time, I know that these feelings of fear and anxiety and grief come from a place of deep care and love. If we don't love something, we're not going to feel grief for it."
While climate emotions are difficult to measure, participants in the musical events reported feelings that can be divided into four categories - anger, positivity, sadness and fear. Based on surveys, interviews, art projects and reflective journal entries before and after, her preliminary analysis shows both musicians and audience members experienced increased feelings of positivity and connection, as well as increased capacity for climate action.
"The participants are now more aware that they're not alone in these emotions," she says.
"They also have a dual ability to hold feelings of sadness, of hopelessness, grief and guilt in conjunction with these feelings of happiness."
Bayne plans to create a how-to guide for communities to create collaborative events that tap into music-making's healing potential.
"We have a pretty good understanding of how climate change is impacting our well-being and our mental health, so research that can help people adapt is a really important next step," she says.
"It's absolutely critical that we feel our emotions and we process them, because that's how we create capacity for action."
