Are girls more resilient than boys? Lessons in gender justice from the Boys Keep Singing project

Boys Keep Singing was a large scale knowledge transfer project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and undertaken by Edge Hill University and the University of York in collaboration with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. It was based upon the findings of a previous AHRC funded research fellowship, published as a monograph in 2008. The two projects sought to identify the underlying causes of a significant gender imbalance in singing and to explore, test and evaluate solutions that would be of value to practitioners in music education. The underlying approach conceptualized the issue as a complex one of gender justice. It was considered that boys’ education was incomplete without an adequate grounding in the arts, including singing. The facilitation of increased young male participation was an obvious benefit for music professionals, but not the primary motivation which was that singing and other arts were believed to be an indispensible part of the social, cultural and “spiritual” development of boys. A greater benefit might thus accrue to society if a larger proportion of the young male population experienced higher levels of emotional literacy and health, social competence and wellbeing through participation in the performing and social arts.