Fostering Musicians’ Wellbeing

The World Health Organization (WHO) has for decades highlighted that health is more than just the absence of disorder. Musicians’ wellbeing has received growing attention over the years, and the music sector seems increasingly engaged in its investigation and promotion. However, initiatives tend to focus on eliminating disorder, with performance anxiety and injury dominating the sector’s efforts. Aiming to understand and promote musicians’ wellbeing in line with the WHO’s proposal requires broadening our outlook beyond the stresses and strains of the profession and looking at positive indicators of human functioning. Positive Psychology is an innovative framework at the center of the latest wellbeing research that can help musicians in this pursuit. It focuses on the conditions that lead individuals and communities to live to their fullest potential. This chapter provides an introduction to Positive Psychology and outlines some of its more prominent wellbeing models. We explore recent findings resulting from the application of this framework to the music sector and examine its promise as an innovative lens to shape wellbeing promotion strategies with musicians.