Always liminal, always learning: Why community learning is needed, and how to start

Abstract

This article sets out the case that there is a conflation of personal and situational liminality in the music industry. The response to this needs to include greater dynamism and development both of musical identities and innovations in the production and business of music. However, the confluence of liminalities produces vulnerabilities and precarities which militate against learning and innovation and lean toward stasis. I offer an alternative way forward, which adopts a different conceptualization of vulnerability and discusses how a situated learning approach can be used to develop socially enabled resilience.