Dr Vicky reports on her United States university book tour

In April 2018 Dr Vicky completed a week long networking and university book tour in the United States, presenting free of charge at 10 events across four days at three universities and covering four states! This included workshops for students, graduates, site visits, industry meetings, leadership meetings, networking and more.

I had a fantastic holiday, as many of you know thanks to social media in New York!

This was my first time in the states so of course Mr MB and Miss MB came too. We had a week together that started with a snow ball fight in Central Park!! KID HEAVEN (not so much parent heaven though, those snow balls were COLD!).

We visited the National History Museum and went to a Yankees game too. And what would a trip to New York be without a Broadway Show – School of Rock was perfect for the whole family.

Then said family went home and the real work began.

The reason for the trip was to tour the book I co-edited, The Economics of Therapy. We launched this book at the World Congress of Music Therapy in Japan last year and were then invited by Lesley University to present a series of workshops and events in America this year. And that is what we did!

Dan Thomas and I, hosted by chapter author Dr Becky Zarate presented 10 events across four days at three universities and covered four states!

We began the tour at Long Island with a 3.5 hour workshop at Molly College. Here we presented our model RAILE to a room full of graduate students, art therapists, counsellors, nurses and music therapists.

It was so wonderful to see people really grasp the concept of the book – that as therapists we have highly developed core clinical skills that are transferable to the business world. We call this model RAILE.

The next day we jumped in the tour bus and drove through Connecticut, past Rhode Island to Massachusetts. Our first meeting was that same day in one of the oldest and most historic pubs in Boston, with industry leader Brian Harris, an incredible music therapist, passionate and motivated leader and entrepreneur. Brian has built a world-class digital medicine company that provides neurologic music therapy clinical and technological services to patients at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

Brian invited us to come and see the new state of the art hospital and his team in action the next day, so we fronted up bright and early at what must be one of the most beautiful (and well equipped) hospitals in the world!

We then ducked across the river to a whole new city Cambridge where Lesley University is based. Here we met with the Creative Arts teaching team, to discuss ways of incorporating entrepreneurial leadership into learning, before meeting with Dean Katz. This was followed by a meeting with the University President Jeff A. Weiss. What an incredible man, and what a powerful meeting!

President Weiss has published extensively over the past 25 years and recently authored the “HBR Guide to Negotiating.” At present, he is working on a new book on leadership. As a music lover and parent of an accomplished musician, we had much to discuss on the art of bringing music, therapy and business into the same realm.

We then presented an experiential workshop to music therapy students, where we shared stories, participated in improvisations and practiced skills from the book.

We completed the day with an evening seminar to music therapy students, graduates and allied health colleagues. Again it was electrifying to share our knowledge and ideas with such an engaged and enthusiastic audience.

The next day the fun continued! We had a number of industry and leadership meetings before completing the day, and subsequently the tour at Berklee College of Music, where we provided an interactive workshop for music therapy students.

An amazing four days, full of learning, growing and sharing. I then went back to New York where I conducted to more meetings with colleagues in music early learning and parent-child music therapy. It was refreshing to benchmark against the world’s best programs and come up shining!

Music Beat is a world leader in this area.

All of Dr Vicky’s presentations were offered free of charge for all attendees and she was not paid to speak.