ABSTRACT
The chapter identifies the predicament addressed by the book – the continuing challenge for teachers to include children/young people with social, emotional and mental health concerns in classroom learning. It discusses causal factors and presenting signs of these conditions and how the music/arts based interventions of the ERASMUS + funded LINK project were conceptualised to support transitions into learning. It explores contextual education policy frameworks that reflected rising concern about mental health issues and outlines how classroom based inter professional interventions/research shared between teachers and music/arts therapists were fundamental to the project design. It explores complexities surrounding the status of music and art in schools and precedents that inform classroom based research into therapeutic social musicking. It identifies the project team's resolve to reapply ideas about communicative musicality within a group context drawing on community music therapy perspectives. The term music/arts based therapeutic teaching practice is introduced, reflecting commitments to implement classroom based interventions/research to support young people's safe transitions into learning. The chapter outlines how the LINK project structure facilitated the interventions and research activities that are explored in the book.
