Professor Simon Procter

Teaching

My teaching is underpinned by an understanding that we learn best through doing and reflecting on our experiences of doing. That also helps us to consider what other people's experiences might be, a very important skill for life. I also believe that everybody has the potential to be creative: our teaching therefore has a responsibility to help people to find ways in which they can experience this and develop it for themselves.

I've done a lot of training of musicians and music therapists in the UK and Poland, and I bring this experience into my work within Converge. As Director of Converge, I'm committed to teaching which enables students to find what is meaningful for them and encourages them to pursue this in ways which may stimulate curiosity and bring hope, possibility and ambition.

I see learning opportunities as potentially transformative for people, especially where they have previously had limited access to education, negative experiences of education, or where they have faced significant challenges in sustaining engagement with education (e.g. due to mental health conditions). In this way, education isn't just a service - it's a human right. That's why I feel I've found a home in Converge where this kind of commitment to education as social justice is at the heart of all we do.

Research

Nowadays I would describe myself as an ethnographer, committed to understanding the ways in which creative practices get done and valued. But it wasn't always like that...

My research activity started within clinical music therapy, and included involvement in medical-style Randomized Controlled Trials. This experience made me question the usefulness of such methodology in relation to creative and interpersonal craft practices, setting me on a quest for other ways of understanding what might be of value in such interactions. Ultimately this led me to do a PhD in music sociology where I learned to be an ethnographer under the supervision of Professor Tia DeNora at Exeter University. This opened my eyes to ways of taking lived experience seriously and being led by research participants into new understandings of things I might otherwise have taken for granted.

I subsequently led the research activity for Nordoff and Robbins in the UK, and sought to diversify the range of research being conducted. I see research as a potential part of the work of every working person, and as a powerful tool for enabling groups of people to think together about how they do what they do and why - and hence for social change. I'm particularly committed to understanding the craft of people's practices and understanding how these hold value for them and others. I'm also focused on identifying the work that people do to make creative practices happen - even when they are not traditionally seen as "experts" in a particular situation. For example, patients in hospital are frequently assumed to be "receiving" music therapy where they are often working really hard to help make the music happen.

Converge has a strong research tradition thanks to its founder Professor Nick Rowe, including the provision of a research methods course, and I am privileged to work alongside the members of our Converge Evaluation and Research Team (CERT).

Recent and ongoing research areas include the usefulness of music therapy for children in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the balance between entrepreneurialism and precarity in musical work, musical adulthood, the relevance of musical biography for musicians training to be music therapists, and the role of music therapy on a medical neurorehabilitation ward.

Publications and conferences

Recent conference presentations

June 2024: EuroScience Open Forum: Katowice, European City of Science 2024

• Invited plenary: Making music-making work for us: how ‘musicking’ can help build and sustain healthy and resilient communities

April 2023: "Trauma, Music and Music Therapy” (Katowice, Poland)

• Keynote: A critic on my shoulder: reclaiming music from the shadow of trauma

June 2022: European Music Therapy Conference (QMU, Edinburgh, UK)

• Precarious, entrepreneurial, or subversive? The work of music therapy under neoliberalism

April 2020: British Association for Music Therapy Conference (Queen’s University, Belfast / online)

• Attending to craft in music therapy work
• Exchanging challenges: working collaboratively to achieve meaningful engagement with issues of diversity, equality and power within music therapy training

Feb 2020: Creative Identities in Transition: Higher Music Education and Employability in the 21^st Century (MDW – Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna, Austria)

• Music therapy as an example of the shifting inter-relationship of precarity and entrepreneurialism in musical work

Nov 2019: Portuguese National Music Therapy Conference (Leiria, Portugal)

• Keynote: Working musically with people with cerebral palsy

Oct 2019: Spanish National Music Therapy Conference (Segovia, Spain)

• Keynote: The Nordoff Robbins approach yesterday today and tomorrow: from individual treatment to community collaboration

August 2019: European Sociology Association conference (Manchester, UK)

• Towards social prescribing: do arts come for free?

Book chapters

Procter, S. (2024) ‘Music therapy as profession and practice. The shifting interrelationship of precarity and entrepreneurialism’. In R. Prokop & R. Reitsamer (eds) Higher Music Education and Employability in a Neoliberal World. London: Bloomsbury

Procter, S. (2023) ‘Music, Health, Society: The development of Nordoff Robbins education in the UK’. In K. Goodman (ed.) Developing Issues in World Music Therapy Education and Training: A Plurality of Views. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas

Procter, S. & DeNora T. (2022) ‘Musical care in adulthood: sounding our way through the landscape’. In Spiro, N. & K.R.M. Sanfilippo (eds) Collaborative Insights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Musical Care Throughout the Life Course. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Procter, S. (2016) ‘Playing my feeling or feeling my playing?’ A music-centred perspective on “emotional expression” in music therapy’. In L. Konieczna-Nowak (ed.) Music Therapy and Emotional Expression : A Kaleidoscope of Perspectives. Katowice: The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music

Röhricht, F.; Webster, S. & Procter, S. (2015) ‘Creative therapies and creativity’. In F. Holloway, S. Kalidindi, H. Killaspy & G. Roberts (eds) Enabling Recovery: The Principles and Practice of Rehabilitation Psychiatry (2^nd edition). London: Royal College of Psychiatrists

Hooper, S. & Procter, S. (2013) ‘Less comfortably numb, more meaningfully occupied’. In E. Ruud, M. Skanland & G. Trondalen (eds) Musical Life Stories. Narratives on Health Musicking. Oslo: Norwegian Academy of Music

Procter, S. (2012). 'Muzykoterapia Społecznościowa' [Community music therapy]. In K. Stachyra (ed.) Modele, Metody i Podejścia w Muzykoterapii [Models, Methods and Approaches in Music Therapy]. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS

Bryndal, A., & Procter, S. (2012) 'Muzykoterapia Nordoff-Robbins' [Nordoff-Robbins music therapy]. In K. Stachyra (ed.) Modele, Metody i Podejścia w Muzykoterapii [Models, Methods and Approaches in Music Therapy]. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS

Procter, S. (2006) ‘Music therapy and social capital: What are we playing at?’ In R. Edwards, J. Franklin & J. Holland (eds) Assessing Social Capital: Concept, Policy and Practice. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press

Procter, S. (2006) ‘Music therapy: why not in education?’ In A. Paterson & S. Zimmermann (eds) No Need for Words: Special Needs in Music Education. Matlock: National Association of Music Educators

Procter, S. (2004) ‘Playing politics: Community Music Therapy and the therapeutic redistribution of musical capital for mental health’. In M. Pavlicevic, & G. Ansdell (eds) Community Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Procter, S. (2002) ‘Empowering and enabling – music therapy in non-medical mental health provision’. In C. Kenny & B. Stige (eds) Contemporary Voices in Music Therapy. Oslo: Unipub

Procter, S. (2000) ‘Czy współimprowizcja może być terapią?’ [Can co-improvisation be therapy?]. In S. Sidorowicz & P. Cylulko (eds) Muzykoterapia w agresji, lęku i cierpieniu [Music therapy in aggression, fear and suffering]. Wrocław (Poland): Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipinskiego we Wrocławiu

Journal articles

Parker, D., Younes, L., Orabi, M., Procter, S. & Paulini, M. (2023) ‘Music therapy as a protection strategy against toxic stress for Palestinian refugee children in Lebanon: A pilot research study’ Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy 15(1). Available online at https://journals.qmu.ac.uk/approaches/article/view/88

Procter, S. (2018) ‘Kris Kristofferson / John Holt – Help Me Make It Through The Night’.  Suomen Antropologi 43(2): 92-95

Procter, S. (2016) 'Playing with distinction? Music therapy and the affordances of improvisation'. Music and Arts in Action 5(1): 52-69

Procter, S. (2011) ‘Reparative musicing: thinking on the usefulness of social capital theory within music therapy’. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 20(3): 242-262

Maratos, A.; Crawford, M.J. & Procter, S. (2011) 'Music therapy for depression: it seems to work, but how?’ British Journal of Psychiatry 199:92-93

Ansdell, G.; Davidson, J.; Magee, W.; Meehan, J. & Procter, S. (2010) ‘From "this f***ing life" to "that's better" ...in four minutes: an interdisciplinary study of music therapy's "present moments" and their potential for affect modulation’. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 19(1), 3-28

Procter, S. (2008) ‘Premising the challenge. A response to Alison Barrington’. British Journal of Music Therapy 22(2): 77-82

Talwar, N.; Crawford, M.J.; Maratos, A.; Nur, U.; McDermott, O. & Procter, S. (2006) ‘Music therapy for inpatients with schizophrenia: an exploratory randomised controlled trial’. British Journal of Psychiatry 189: 405-409

Procter, S. (2005) ‘Parents, children and their therapists. A collaborative project examining therapist-parent interactions in a music therapy clinic’. British Journal of Music Therapy 19(2): 45-58

Procter, S. (1999) ‘The therapeutic musical relationship: a two-sided affair?’ British Journal of Music Therapy 13(1): 28-37

Thesis 

Procter, S. (2013) Music therapy: what is it for whom? An ethnography of music therapy in a community mental health resource centre. PhD thesis: University of Exeter. Available online at https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/11101

Book reviews

Procter, S. (2018) Book review of ‘A Matrix for Community Music Therapy Practice’ by Stuart Wood. British Journal of Music Therapy 32(1): 43-45

Procter, S. (2017) Book review of ‘For Ethnography’ by Paul Atkinson. Qualitative Research 17(4): 473-475

Book

Pavlicevic M.; Ansdell, G.; Procter, S. & Hickey, S. (2009) Presenting the Evidence (2^nd edition). London: Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre

Professional activities

I am a trustee for the National Centre for Early Music as well as for two Yorkshire-based charities that have grown out of the work of Converge - Emerging Voices and Out of Character theatre company.

I am a member of the British Sociological Association and the British Association for Music Therapy as well as an honorary member of the Association of Polish Music Therapists.

I have a long-term involvement with the music therapy programme at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland.

I'm a former editor of the British Journal of Music Therapy and regularly undertake peer reviews for a range of arts and creativity-related journals.