In Episode 110, following a discussion on social media, Luke talks to Ben Richardson about the language around music therapy, Relational Frame Theory, commissioning, and whether music therapy is actually 'functional all the way down'. You'll be hearing more from Ben at the BAMT conference in November 2026, and no doubt in future publications, but Music Therapy Conversations got here first!

Ben Richardson is a music therapist and the Therapy Lead at the National Online School, a large multi-disciplinary team of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, creative arts therapists, and therapy assistants. His clinical and academic work focuses heavily on the intersection of music therapy and contextual behavioural science. By integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT), Ben wants to build a framework of Process-Based Music Therapy, exploring clinical musical interactions as a rich, complex form of verbal behaviour, whilst honouring the importance of the aesthetic and "felt" aspects of the work music therapists do. Ben is particularly driven by the changing commissioning environment for education, health, and social care, and what music therapists could do to strengthen their position within it. He will be presenting his research on this at the BAMT conference in November.

References

Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., Roche, B. 2001. Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition. Springer.

Pavlicevic, M. 1997. Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Törneke, N. 2010. Learning RFT: An Introduction to Relational Frame Theory. New Harbinger Publications.

Links

LinkedIn TMTC: The Music Therapy Charity

Not referenced in the recording, but Chan et al. (2022) a good example (and open access article) of application of RFT principles to music (not music therapy): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37397135/