Edinburgh Napier University

  We are embarking on a collaborative project between Music, the Sports, Exercise, and Health Science Research Group, and the Mountain Bike Centre of Scotland (MTBCOS) in a project encouraging people to be active and creative, with targeted benefits to both physical and mental health and wellbeing. We aim to explore how an interdisciplinary approach can encourage engagement in both areas through taking a musical approach to sport and a sporting approach to music. We believe that the interest and engagement in each area can be bolstered by our proposed integrated approach.

Initially, we will look at ways in which we can encourage people to engage in music composition, through the sonification of health and activity data and other sensor data eg cycling metrics. We will involve people from a range of demographics and encourage them to engage in activity, track their activity and then use these data as a basis for a range of musical activities. Such activities may include learning to make music from their health/activity data, having composers/sound-artists use the data to sonify community or location-specific activity, or using the data to tailor personal musical profiles for training activities. Activity data can be gathered from any type of activity, so this truly is an opportunity for all and inclusive project aligning with Scottish Government Policy in these areas.