Community music for critical positive youth development: A cross-disciplinary literature review of implications for addressing social inequity

Critical positive youth development (CPYD) is a promising framework for supporting young people in strengths-based ways to both thrive individually and address structural foundations of social inequity. This literature review explores community music for operationalizing CPYD. Database searches were supplemented with expert consultation and handsearching of identified articles and key journals. The authors used a purposive sampling strategy within a critical interpretive synthesis methodology to select 50 articles exploring outcomes of community music programmes with young people. They synthesized findings from these 50 cross-disciplinary studies to illuminate outcomes across the CPYD framework: competence, confidence, compassion, connection, character, contribution and critical consciousness. This study affirms the use of community music in contexts of youth development and implications for health and arts practitioners and researchers are discussed in relation to using music as a potential approach for CPYD to address social inequity with young people. Findings highlight the need for increased art-based research that explores how community music can support equity.