Explore how Doonside High School overcame limited budgets and outdated facilities to create a thriving music program. This case study reveals practical strategies for optimising resources, implementing trauma-informed practices, and building a sustainable performance culture in challenging educational contexts.

When it comes to Authentic Learning, our interpretation is that it must involve active learning reflective of “real-world” practice. Create learning opportunities that are found in everyday life, and you are now facilitating Authentic Learning.

That said, there are some important things you can take on board to make your facilitation of authentic learning more effective, and relevant to your students. Here are 5 things that have helped us facilitate Authentic Learning in our classrooms.

Ever wondered how often you should be changing the strings of guitars and basses in your classroom? This blog will provide tried and tested strategies for you to get your guitars sounding great without breaking your faculty budget. Grab some strings and let’s get into it!

This blog post from the ABC is a great place to see Richard, at large in the community, advocating for a great music education for every child.

According to the foreword to a collection of his writings (which Brad thought he owned until he pulled it out to write this post and noticed James Humberstone’s signature inside the front cover - sorry James) which we’ll list below, Paynter directed the Music in Secondary Schools project in the UK from 1973 to 1982.

Any one of Lucy Green’s four books on music education would have earned her a place among The Cats of Music Education. This blog explores her origin story and points readers to her most important works.

Christopher Small coined the term “Musicking”. His work on the natures and values of music(s) and education were game changers. Small challenges us to ask the question: “Whose Music Do We Teach, Anyway?”.

We’ve been fortunate to be able to spend some time listening to Prof. Burnard riff in real time on a range of classroom music education topics in recent Zoom symposia and conferences and we are so humbled and inspired by her capacity to articulate the most pressing issues in the most accessible manner.

Thomas A. Regelski is the go-to-guy for legit academic writing. Who else in music education would choose “Tractate on Critical Theory and Praxis” or “Prolegomenon to a praxial philosophy of music and music education” as journal article titles?

Estelle Jorgensen is another titan of our field that we should all know. We think the video above really captures her ‘hipness’ too. Notice how excited she is about a new thing - that’s such a powerful model for us all.

Now that we’ve started, it seems natural to name this first set of blog posts “The Cats of Music Education”. We want to (re)introduce you to some important music education thinkers that have helped to shape our field and have been influential in the development of our approach. Where possible, we’l try to share videos of them so you we can get a sense of them as “persons” (thanks Dr Elliott).

Welcome to the Gig Based Learning (GBL) blog. As a first step in our blogging journey, we thought it might be useful to (re)introduce us to one of the founders of modern music education - Bennett Reimer.