It’s raining MMMEN: My time as an intern on the Making Music for Managing El Niño project
Embedding impact-focussed work into early careers in research is an exciting way to extend positive academic culture and contribute to societal good. This blog was written by Millie McCallum, currently undertaking her MA (Hons) in Geography, who has joined academics in a new project. By involving and empowering our student community through generating impact, the next generation of researchers can be nurtured and supported in their first steps towards driving positive change.
Making Music for Managing El Niño (MMMEN) is an impact project led by Professor Nina Laurie from the School of Geography and Sustainable Development and Ellen Thomson from the Laidlaw Music Centre at as part of the El Niño Phenomenon of Opportunities, a series of research projects focused on the Cristo nos Valga and Bernal districts of Sechura in Northern Peru. The effects of El Niño, including extreme rainfall, are assumed to pose severe challenges for low- and middle-income countries in South America within the typical crisis narrative. Flooding and heavy rainfall create economic losses and environmental destruction, and climate change looks set to exacerbate these challenges. However, accepting this as the only outcome oversimplifies and undermines the cultural complexity of the phenomenon its geographical impact.
By basing this research in Sechura, MMMEN furthers knowledge and understanding of the positive outcomes El Niño can have on desert rural communities, an area relatively unexplored by academia. Increased rainfall and runoff during the El Niño period have led to the formation of the ‘La Niña’ Lagoon, measured at 2172km2 in 2017. The local people in the town of Mala Vida in the district of Cristo nos Valga have utilised the benefits of this freshwater source in an arid area to create livelihood opportunities such as fishing, agricultural and livestock activity. This has allowed engagement in both local and national markets, providing social and economic benefits in what are typically understood as the conditions of a crisis. MMMEN aims to understand the cultural heritage of these practices and share the narratives around them, demonstrating the importance of taking a culturally nuanced approach to crisis, especially within the context of climate change.
MMMEN aims to build on current research findings and Peru-based partnerships by continuing its collaboration with one of the local schools directly impacted by the opportunities El Niño provides to enhance their cultural understanding of the phenomenon. Earlier collaborations with the Daniel Alcidez Carrión School (IE DAC) in the Cristo nos Valga district led to the achievement of a 2022 award in the Peruvian Ministry of Education’s Educational Innovation Projects National Competition. The school used their prize money to buy instruments for the students, which they have used to compose two folk songs about the benefits El Niño brings. These were composed and performed by the students in a traditional Andean Huayno style under the tutorship of their music teacher, Juan Carlos Chávez. The first folk song “El fenómeno del niño y sus beneficios” re-tells the benefits of fishing and farming in their community. The second song entitled “En mi pueblo querido” specifies the crops and activities that can take place because of El Niño ending with the words “men and women fight and struggle for their pueblo for a better future and to leave poverty behind”. IE DAC students subsequently performed these songs for their student peers in the nearby district of Bernal, an area well known for its Cumbia style music bands and for hosting an annual international music festival. Building on this long musical heritage, the Bernal music teacher, Miguel Paiva transformed the tunes into Cumbia style music that the Bernal students performed in a concert held jointly with IE DAC.
The IE DAC songs were also shared with the St Andrews Music Participation (StAMP) children’s choir as part of a Scotland–Peru cultural exchange. As St Andrews University student interns, our role was to shadow this process.
StAMP is a Fife-based music education project with many different groups that aims to create opportunities for fun music making for children. There were two main aspects of the cultural exchange: music making and recording digital postcards. The choir in St Andrews learnt the two folk songs during their weekly rehearsals and then performed them at their summer concert. They also recorded ‘digital postcards’ of key landmarks in St Andrews to introduce the students of IE DAC to the town of St Andrews, also historically a fishing town but facing different climate-related challenges.
We launched this project in March 2024 when we introduced the StAMP choir to Peru by helping them to write postcards to the students and staff in Bernal and IE DAC. We then spent some time getting to know the StAMP choir by participating in some of their rehearsals and dusting off our own singing skills! While different to their typical repertoire, they enthusiastically learnt the Peruvian folk songs and were also keen to sing one of them in Spanish. During the StAMP summer concert, they performed the two folk songs with confidence. With the English translations written below, they were able to learn about El Niño from the perspective of the students in Bernal, as well as share the message of the songs to the audience listening.
We also assisted in the lead up to the filming workshop. As part of a half-day workshop, we taught the children about El Niño and climate change and how this global theme links to them in St Andrews. This was an interesting task as we had to gauge how much the young choir members (mainly primary school children) already knew about climate change. We were really impressed with their answers and interest. After a classroom-based session we introduced them to the main task of the day: recording the digital postcards across St Andrews.
After jointly planning the locations for recording, the children wrote out their scripts, learning some new facts about the history of St Andrews and increasing their awareness of some the current issues facing the town where they live when it comes to climate change challanges. We spent some time exploring the town’s key landmarks and recording the digital postcards, including at the Pier, Sallies Quad and the Castle. We rounded off the workshop with a Jannetta’s ice cream in the sunshine while recording the last postcard. This was an altogether exciting and memorable day for the children, educating both themselves and their Peruvian peers about St Andrews.
Being an intern on the MMMEN project has been an insightful experience and exciting opportunity. I was drawn to this project as it combined my two key interests: sustainability and music. As a geography student, I have learnt about the importance of listening to the perspectives of marginalised communities to better inform our understanding of climate change and was fascinated by Professor Laurie’s first-year lecture on crisis and development. I have a deep interest in the ways that music can be used to help better our understanding of climate change, and MMMEN has provided me an insight into how this can take place in an academic setting. Overall, I am grateful to have had this experience and to have been part of an amazing team.