Music can play a novel role in the healing process after a disaster.

This project developed the field of resilient recovery to disasters, particularly in displaced communities. It did so by enhancing the role of schools as hubs of community resilience.

Why is this project important?

Children are uniquely vulnerable to the negative consequences of disasters, in part due to their dependence on adults and their ongoing development (Peek, 2008).

Schools are essential sites for safeguarding children and youth in disaster settings and are considered second homes (Mutch, 2014; see also, UNISDR, 2014; ACFCSS, 2016; Paci-Green et al., 2020; Parrott et al., 2023).

Teachers are important because they are seen as second parents who take on a support-based role after disasters (Parrott et al., 2023). In doing so, teachers often put aside personal post-disaster needs to demonstrate calmness, courage and empathy (Mutch, 2015).

Music has a remarkable power to heal and transform. Music-making and music listening can be experienced as having a positive influence on well being (Fancourt et al., 2019; Rodwin et al., 2022; Zapata & Hargreaves, 2017).

After the 2018 tsunami in Indonesia, a team of social scientists worked with the use of music, engaging students who survived the event.

The use of music showed significant results lessening the students post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, decreasing their fatalism and also increasing peer support.

This is how we made it happen.

The intervention was designed based on psychological principles. It also sought to empower young female teenagers to take an active role in their psychological recovery and resilience.

SetUp

Preparation

Music workshop

Adding the visuals

Results

With the support of psychologists and music creators, girls created a song that aimed to foster post-disaster psychological resilience, based on their own experiences, knowledge and skills.

The Results

This is the effect that the song creation workshops had on the girls’ psychological recovery:

100% said an activity made them feel calm and happy

82% felt their song would help them cope

0% said an activity made them feel anxious or worried

One year after the first survey, we measured their resilience and this is what we found:

Reduced Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms

Reduced Anxiety

Reduced Fatalism

Increased Sense of Peer Supports

With this methodology, we learnt that music helps teenagers recover and become resilient. Are you ready to apply this workshop with your students?

This methodology can be implemented in your country.

To put this method into practice, choose a manageable group size where all the kids' voices are heard. Select the right partners; anyone working in a school or with young people as a group leader may find this intervention useful.

Check out our list of materials and resources below to start working on it.

To conduct the workshop on the design and delivery of the psychosocial resilience intervention in schools, you can use the Intervention Strategy Handbook.
Download the handbook for guidance.

Have you conducted a workshop using music to help your students recover? We would love to hear your songs and receive your feedback! How was the experience of conducting the workshops? What worked well? What did not work well? Please contact us at h.joffe@ucl.ac.uk.

We are an interdisciplinary team of academics from the UK and Indonesia who co-developed an innovative intervention that targets psychosocial disaster support and which centres on schools as hubs for fostering community empowerment.