Dr. Sara Ramshaw of Exeter University and Dr. Paul Stapleton of Queen’s University Belfast consider how the virtues of good improvising – listening, responsiveness, appropriate risk-taking, timely intervention – can be used to improve the quality legal of decision making in Northern Ireland. Their symposium, Just Improvisation: Enriching child protection law through musical techniques, discourses and pedagogies, seeks to further the on-going conversation of the Translating Improvisation Research Group (TIRG) about the fundamentally improvisatory nature of the common law tradition, and how can this understanding of law can in turn heighten our sense musical improvisation’s normative dimension. This episode originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM in Guleph Ontario on June 4, 2015.

Sound It Out is hosted by Rachel Elliott who is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Sound It Out is produced in conjunction with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. The show explores whether and how improvised music can serve as a basis for discursive inclusivity, the creation of new forms of shared meaning, and more democratic means of connecting with each other.

Sound It Out airs on Guelph’s campus and community radio station, CFRU 93.3FM, on alternating Tuesdays at 5pm.