When someone thinks about a military veteran, they might think of the older person selling poppies in the local supermarket or Highstreet. Maybe they think of Captain Tom Parker or the Remembrance Day Parade. The veteran community are visible at events such as these, and other significant anniversaries but is not very visible outside of these types of events. The fact is though that you have probably passed a veteran, or two in the street today. According to the Royal British Legion Survey RBL (2014) veterans account for 4.4% of the UK population, therefore veterans represent a significant community of ex-military personnel. The term community is used because as Balfour (2018) explains, there is some evidence to suggest that ex-military personnel continue to connect remotely with their peers via closed and specific social media sites like Facebook and that these virtual networks operate as a quasi-support environment (p 562). Brewin (2011) cited by Balfour (2018) argues that military service can lead to profound changes in identity, affecting both military personnel’s perception of themselves and the world. This change of identity has been termed transition by several authors including Ahern et al. (2015); Binks and Cambridge (2018), Cooper et al. (2018) and Lancaster et al. (2018).
During military service, the individual may experience and endure extreme hostile environments, be in situations that can result in life-changing injury to themselves or others and violent death of comrades and civilians. They may have to deal with the aftermath of these incidents and are expected to conduct themselves professionally. This inevitably takes its toll on the individual and can result in moral injury, posttraumatic stress (PTS), and other mental health issues. At the end of military service for some, the transition back to civilian life is a complicated, frustrating, and difficult one. As Ahern et al. (2015) describe normal life is alien, many veterans feel a lack of purpose in civilian life, it lacks structure, and they feel a disconnection from people at home.
It would be rational to assume that community music (CM) projects with this community would be a helpful intervention to alleviate some of the issues that veterans have in adjusting to and dealing with life in a civilian community. Communal music making has been shown to have positive effects on feelings of detachment and negative beliefs about oneself (Landis-Shack et al., 2017), it provides a means for people to define and redefine their self-identity (Baker & Ballantyne, 2013), and group songwriting experiences have been used to develop socialization skills or engender feelings of belonging to a community (Bradt et al., 2019). Landis-Shack et al. (2017) also cite (Carr et al. 2011) and explain that music can help ground someone in the present moment when faced with an intrusive or distressing reminder, such intrusive throughs are symptomatic of PTS. The UK veteran community, however, is a population group that is underrepresented in community music projects and research. (Balfour, 2018), in the Oxford Handbook of Community Music, states that “Despite some high-profile music projects such as military wives, in the United Kingdom, there is very little ongoing work exploring the relationship between music and the needs of military audiences (p558).” At the Forces in Mind Trust, Research conference in March 2022, presenters from all parts of the UK shared the research and projects that were being conducted in their region. There were reports of intervention projects and research including a variety of artistic activities, but there were no reports on any music projects taking place.
Previous research has found that there are studies of CM interventions in non-veteran communities that study similar mental health conditions and issues that the UK veteran community have, and there are studies that have been conducted with non-UK veterans suffering from PTS, Noyes and Schlesinger (2017), for example, stated that early studies indicate that music therapy results in alleviation of PTS symptoms (p81). So why does it appear that there are very few studies or projects involving music and the UK veteran community?
Could it be that there is a lack of engagement on the part of the veterans, Balfour (2018) states ‘there is an in-built resistance between military personnel and civilians instilled from day one of boot camp. Civilians are different. You only trust each other. The military is your family.’ (p537). This could be the reason for what Balfour (2018) describes as the distrust and suspiciousness that the veteran community have for artists and university researchers, or could it be that the good intentions that community musicians have when trying to work with veterans are not welcome and the Illich (1968) presentation ‘To Hell with Good Intensions’ cited by Balfour (2018) should be observed and the community left alone?
This research will hopefully extend the limited research on the effects of CM on the military veteran community and whether there is value in attempts to engage the veteran community in CM interventions. The potential practical implications for this are for readers and funders to advocate future funding to promote opportunities for music-making projects in the veteran community. This study intends to assess the viability of long-term funded projects and the creation of music clubs that local military veterans can access to engage in music activities to promote and enhance wellbeing. The topic of the study will be to examine the potential impact of CM on the UK veteran community and the conditions required to sustain and develop veterans' music activities.
The key questions of this study will respond to how community musicians can engage the veteran community in active music-making to promote wellbeing, to help readers, understand the impact of military life on an individual and how the development of a musical identity can assist in providing a new social place for the veteran.
Therefore, the research questions are as follows:
1. Can participatory group music-making have a significant positive effect on the well-being of UK military veterans?
2. Could the development of musical identity provide a new social place for veterans through a community music intervention?
3. To what extent could the military veteran use active music-making to assist in the regulation of emotions and positive mental health?
To do this the veteran community must be put into context and the military & veteran identity understood. Current and relevant research involving veterans and music will be examined and the principles of community music outlined. The study will engage with newly formed veteran music groups and using these groups as case studies will explore how these groups have developed, the barriers they have encountered and the experiences of the organisers, facilitators, and participants. The findings from the observation of practice and the qualitative data collected from participants exploring both its practical and emotional impact will inform future research to guide an action-based research project in the future.