Edinburgh Napier University

  In June 2014, a disparate group of trained and untrained performers gathered together at the Chisenhale Dance Space to perform items from the Scratch Orchestra’s 1969 Nature Study Notes. The performance was not a nostalgic recreation of past practice, but was something new, growing from the practice of the group itself, and one which posed an interesting balance between individual and communal responsibilities and participations, indicative of a powerful engagement with contemporary and relevant practices that activate and negotiate individual and communal concepts of identity. This paper explores how we might theorise such an arena, situating this performance somewhere between community music and a manifestation of avant-garde art.