As a music therapist, for many years I wondered why the work involves such tension: creative, life-giving musical encounters conflict with a constant pressure to provide ‘evidence’. In 2023, I completed a PhD at King’s College London and published this research in Insights from music therapy practice and research – Other knowing (Palgrave Macmillan in 2025).

The book explores this tension, asking what is meant by evidence, who decides, and what happens to the insider-relational-musical experience of those present in the music therapy, particularly if they do not use language. It probes at what we believe can be known, and how, and uses arts-based methodology to explore the arts-based field of music therapy. Above all, it challenges how words and numbers – and methodologies based upon them – can disenfranchise the people music therapy is seeking to empower.