My dissertation with CYM has been focusing on finding a name for God in youth culture, as a result a number of young people identified God (or their God/idol/characteristic/i got lost here) as MUSIC. Here is my strategy to engage with young people to raise self awareness & explore spirituality.
The rise in the consumption of digital music through the internet and personal players, is beginning to provide us with the ability to engage with listeners in depth. In the world of youth work this topic can be a daunting one with constantly changing trends and mediums. The data of a persons listening habits can be stored through the majority of applications using a website service called Last.fm and then used as a tool for spiritual engagement. Andrew Godwin has written a graphical program to crunch the data, called Lastgraph
Above is a graph of my years listening habits (April 2009 to 10), below I have zoomed in on the months of February and March 2010.
A number of avenues for investigation can emerge, some of these are suggested below;
Look at the musical ebb and flow of your life, times when you were away from your music, or reasons why some weeks you listened to far more (December in my case).
The moments when you started to listen to a band, was it a gig, a friend that introduced you, what memories does it bring back?
How has your overall tastes in music or listening habits changed, what does this say about you?
Compare your graphs with your friends or community, how do they compare? Are they also on the same musical journey you are on?
Think of a sad or hard moment in the past year. What were you listening to then?
If you experience God through music, are there any points you can identify that you were close to him/her?
Does your music taste accurately represent you as an individual
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