Samenvatting

Sound Soils is a practice-oriented research initiative aimed at exploring opportunities for musicians to contribute to rural life in the Northern Netherlands, with a specific emphasis on participatory music practices. Grounded in Participatory Action Research methodology and ethnographic forms of data collection, this project seeks to lay the groundwork for further action-oriented research. Amidst evolving landscapes and contemporary pressures affecting both the arts and rural living, policymakers and artists alike are directing more attention to non-urban cultural practices. Participatory art forms, such as music, offer a unique potential to (re)connect people with each other and their surroundings by fostering reflection and reshaping societal perspectives. However, attempting to integrate into rural communities can pose challenges for artists coming from outside these locales. There is a notable absence of clear and sustainable pathways for artists to engage in collaborative practices within rural settings, and research on this subject is limited. To begin to understand the unique qualities and cultural/community engagement of villages in our region, we conducted immersive visits to three villages (representing each of the three northern provinces) to speak to locals about the existing cultural fabric of their village, as well as the current concerns and wishes of their inhabitants. Alongside providing other insights into village life in our region, our findings help us to identify potential avenues for musicians aiming to run participatory projects in rural communities in ways that would fit in with local interests and community life. In this way, we focus not only on ways to initiate such projects but also how to make them sustainable through collaboration and embedment into existing community structures. This presentation shared the preliminary findings and methodologies of this small-scale study, explained the particular questions and context that led us to conduct it, and discussed our plans for the follow-up research-in-practice collaborating with music students and professionals at our institution to pilot participatory music projects in the villages studied and others like them.