Music as a tool for environmental education and advocacy: artistic perspectives from musicians of the Playlist for the Planet

Abstract

Environmental education is a key tool in humanity’s efforts to address environmental issues. The arts can help provide some of the affective components of environmental education – emotions, values, and motivations driving pro-environmental behavior. As one of the arts, music can captivate, entertain, and create a sense of community. Using non-probabilistic purposive sampling, we interviewed a cohort of environmentally aware musicians with the goal of understanding their mental constructions around the role of music in environmental education and advocacy. A constant comparative coding method was used to code the interviews. The analysis revealed four artistic and five quality dimensions that the participants considered when sharing their pro-environmental values through their music. The four artistic dimensions emerged as continua representing ranges of choice regarding how a musician might create and deliver an environment-related song. The five quality dimensions emerged as recommendations for effectiveness of messaging through art that is perceived as authentic.

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Keywords:

• Music
• environmental education
• ecomusicology
• environmental communication
• environmental advocacy