I sit down with my client; we are exploring the ways music interacts with their internal processing to build their recognition of feelings and emotions. This space is unique, built on deep safety, trust, and understanding. After our time together I sit down at my computer and look at my SMART goals and sigh, how do I explain this process, how can I reduce this experience into measurements and outcomes?

Music therapy has had a positive impact across Australia these past 50 years and in the last decade, funding has been made accessible like never before to so many Australians. Yet, there remains a discord when working in a funding system that is disability focused and outcome driven, and a socio-cultural system that is person-centred and trauma informed. While these funding systems allow for increased access and accelerated growth of the music therapy profession, the process and underlying approaches of these systems lag behind current best practice.

This critical self exploration will delve into the process of working as a private practice RMT these past five years, a time that has collided with enormous cultural and social change. I will reflect on contemporary challenges that I have experienced, from working to change key language and documentation within a practice, to evolving approaches and procedures to advocate for post-ableist informed approaches. From this, connections will be drawn, and future possibilities for translative advocacy explored. If we sit in the discordance and listen more deeply, we will hear that whilst there is no resolution, there is harmony.