The panellists are all female identifying music therapists, aligned in our commitment to emergent and values-led practice (Wheatley & Frieze, 2011). We begin with the shared premise that, through leveraging the affordances of music therapists can challenge traditional ways of being in complex systems (Margetts, 2023; McLean, 2016; Steele et al., 2020). Within this panel we will share our processes as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) and ways in which we are “being different” as music therapists in our businesses as we seek to bolster the impact of our music therapy work in context. We will speak to the challenges we encounter across multiple sectors (including education, healthcare and community mental health), and offer stories of innovative approaches to music therapy.

Through this panel we will return to the body, the music and the relationship as a means of illustrating our commitment to emergent, values-led and reflexive approaches, and to counter the hegemonic norm of the disconnected, patriarchal and capitalistic domination paradigms (Eisler, R, 1987) that govern the systems we work within. This will include an invitation for the audience to participate in embodiment, musicking and reflexive process with us as a way of experiencing how we use music to co-regulate and align together.

In this, our 50th year, we will argue for our position as thought leaders in societal change despite the ongoing challenges we face as a profession in gaining access to funding from within traditional systems. We will conclude our panel discussion by responding to the provocation “what does the future hold for music therapy?”. Drawing on Wheatley’s (2011) two-loop model for conceptualising complex system change we will share our innovative thoughts on the future of our profession in the evolving health, education and community contexts in which we work.