Safe spaces as assemblages: Affect, sonic territorialisation, and digital everyday health musicking for young people’s wellbeing

Abstract

Introduction: Young people across Europe face unprecedented mental health challenges amidst social inequalities, environmental crisis, and technological disruption. With formal services difficult to access, everyday digital music engagement may offer therapeutic value, yet these practices remain undertheorised. This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding how young people construct “safe spaces” through digital everyday health musicking (DEHM), examining the intersection of assemblage theory, affect studies, and sonic territorialisation.

Method: We provide theoretical analysis to underpin clinical and research investigations examining how musical engagement operates within complex socio-technical assemblages through spatial and affective frameworks.

Results: Safety in DEHM emerges as fragile and contextually negotiated rather than fixed. Through sonic territorialisation, young people construct provisional territories by modulating affective flows through musical engagement. These processes operate through structured (algorithmic, playlist-based) and experimental (exploratory, creative) digital practices, whilst also bearing risks of affective enclosure and algorithmic constraint.

Discussion: DEHM represents a legitimate complement to formal music therapy, offering distinct therapeutic affordances through autonomous engagement with digital technologies. Rather than replacing professional intervention, DEHM provides frameworks for understanding how sonic practices generate therapeutic possibilities outside clinical settings, positioning young people as active agents whilst maintaining critical awareness of platform constraints. Music therapists and mental health practitioners should recognise DEHM as a valuable therapeutic resource whilst supporting critical digital literacy. Recommendations address ethics of institutional appropriation emphasising how practitioners can enable exploratory practices that enhance rather than constrain young people’s existing musical agency.