Trawling the LIPA Metaverse: Community Music, my LIPA, and Questions of Research and Scholarship by Lee Higgins

Lee Higgins is a professor at York St John University, UK and the Director of the International Centre of Community Music. As a presenter, guest speaker, and workshop leader he has worked on four continents in university, school, and NGO settings and was the President of International Society of Music Education from 2016 to 2018. He was the senior editor for the International Journal of Community Music(2007-2021), author of Community Music: In Theory and in Practice (2012, OUP), and Thinking Community Music (2024, OUP), co-author of Engagement in Community Music (2017, Routledge), Free to be Musical (2010, R&L Education) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018) and Ethno Music Gatherings (2024, Intellect).

Lee was an employee of LIPA for 12-years and led the Community Arts department from 2001-2008, before leaving the institution to take up an academic appointment in the USA. Here he reflects on his time at LIPA: what the significant moments were and he pinpoints events that disrupted his practice and thinking. He asks all of us, irrespective of whether we were at LIPA: in what ways did your education shape your thinking? Are there questions you have carried since you completed that journey? If so, what are they and how are you considering them today? 

Community Music, my LIPA, and Questions of Research and Scholarship by Lee Higgins

I was driving my bright yellow, ex-British Telecom Ford transit van on the A47. As usual, the vehicle was filled with samba drums and assorted instruments as I made my way from one to another of the regular workshops I had initiated since being a music animateur employed by Peterborough Arts Council. A news item came on the radio. It was a feature that sought to highlight a new performing arts institution in Liverpool. David Price was the spokesperson; I recognized his Sunderland accent immediately. I knew Dave through my association with Sound Sense, the UK professional association for community music. The place, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, LIPA for short, sounded intriguing, particularly because Dave was the Head of Learning, and his background was in community-based work. As I drove between workshops, I reflected on the LIPA news item and was curious to find out more. As it happens, I had been considering my next move because I wasn’t sure what else I could achieve in my current position. I kept an eye and ear out for any openings at LIPA, any job opportunities. Within the year, a few arts posts were advertised. I applied and was hired in 1997 alongside Roger Hill. Our main task was to ‘deliver’ the European Social Funded (ESF) community arts programme to a large section of the City. I recall Roger and I trooping all over Liverpool providing a plethora of drama and music workshops –at least within the areas with the ‘right’ postcodes. Liverpool was a new place for me, but not so for Roger, and it was during our many Taxi rides that I began to get to know and understand Liverpool. As the student cohorts increased, my teaching role at LIPA expanded. I became a ‘main grade lecturer’ reflecting my shift from LIPAs community ‘outreach’ to its academic teaching and learning staff.

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