Alpha Woodward

Music Therapy, Leadership and Transformation in Humanitarian Aid Alpha Woodward

In the fall of 2003 I was invited to lead a team of music therapists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), a country that had been recently savaged by two brutal inter-ethnic wars. The program operated out of the Pavarotti Music Centre on the East side of Mostar, a divided city in the southwest region of BiH. My journey over the next four years was epically challenged by my immersion into the complexities of post-conflict recovery, and the cultural confusion that followed the atrocities of those wars. Together with academic perspectives and performative writing techniques, the chapters explore a trail of thematic material that emerged during a confusing, ambiguous repatriation period in the years following my time in Bosnia. As an autoethnography it ultimately aims toward a deeper understanding of my own culpability as a leader of a small multi-ethnic team in Mostar, BiH, and the implications this may have for arts-based fieldwork practice in post conflict regions.