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SUSTAINING THE OFFER: Activity, Engagement, Achievement

Graham Dowdall blogs for Rhythmix about his work with groups of young people especially those with Moderate to Profound Learning Disabilities and also Mental Health needs - its’ rewards and its’ challenges. Graham is a familiar name within the music education sector as a workshop leader and trainer. In this blog Graham starts by exploring the activities for young people in terms of: improvisation and creative expression; ‘Labelling young people’; the familiar and the unknown. Graham then explores engagement by talking about a Rhythmix project with Family Intensive Support Services where he works with young people alongside family members using his ‘Sustaining the Offer’ methodology. In the final section he explores achievement - the unforeseen and the unknown

I am lucky enough to do lots of participatory work with groups of young people especially those with Moderate to Profound Learning Disabilities and also Mental Health needs. This work is incredibly rewarding but also throws up lots of challenges and I’d like to explore some aspects of these I’ve noticed from recent practice.

1. Activities

2 Engagement with young people who may find communication difficult either verbally or via face and body signals

3. Achievement

Activities

I come from an experimental musical background where improvisation and creative expression are fundamental tools but I also compose and perform. I think it's important that we are able offer as much of this breadth of musical experience to our participants as possible, which for me means lots of opportunities for self expression through improvisation and open composition but I also use repertoire including well known material. I think that a combination of the familiar and the more challenging can create a fun, creative, inclusive session which can cater for the wide range of tastes and abilities within the group.

It's really important to remember that though a group may be described as (for example) having Moderate Learning Disabilities, actually the abilities and interests of that group are probably much wider than in any so-called "mainstream" group. So the more I do this work the more it reminds me that we need to cater for all the individuals in the group rather than just offer a one size fits all approach just because the group all fit into the same educational box.

Adding to this mix are the specific qualities of young people on the Autistic Spectrum. Now, this is not the place to explore the complexities and ranges of Autism but one common factor that we can observe is the difficulty of making sense of a confusing world.

One way to create the right safe, inclusive atmosphere we need in creative music sessions is to use familiarity somewhere in the session. This isn't to say that sessions should always be just the same, but that including some familiar elements can be really effective, particularly at the start and to a lesser extent at the end of sessions. We all use warm-up and Hello activities to create that atmosphere but I've also noticed that every now and again it can be a really good idea to come back to a familiar song to re-establish that safety after perhaps more exploratory work. Another thing to say about songs and repertoire is around listening to our young people and giving them a voice. We are indeed the leaders of the session – trained and reflective but responding to requests has a role to play in our sessions. This doesn’t mean always returning to requested songs because that can be dangerous in terms of reinforcing repetitive behavior but it does mean being open to the voices and choices of our participants.

Engagement

Over the last few years I’ve had the benefits of working in some projects which have allowed me to work with the same group over an extended period. One lovely project I’ve worked on for Rhythmix has been with Family Intensive Support Services (FISS) where we work with young people alongside family members, and an essential ingredient in this project was convincing Parents, Carers and Support workers that their young people might engage and enjoy the sessions and get something out of them.

FISS project reflections

“This has been a really lovely, challenging but incredibly rewarding project. At the outset there were concerns that this very challenged group of young people with a variety of both Learning Difficulties and Mental Health needs would struggle to take part together in a music project. There is a wide range of needs as well as of ages so developing a curriculum has needed to be carefully thought through.”

“We tried a variety of activities from singing well known songs to improvising. Something worked for pretty much each young person in the room. The group were well supported, the space was warm and light and very conducive to music work. The group showed lots of enthusiasm and some good musical skills.”

“I used a variety of well known and less well known songs, alongside rhythmic activities, soundscape experimentation and other instrumental work. Some of the group were almost instantly engaged and others took a while and a lot of effort but over these weeks the level of both engagement and creative achievement from the group has grown steadily.”

“One older girl was immediately drawn to the drum kit and has subsequently played every week. For others playing other instruments within songs has obviously been most enjoyable. One lad politely refused to take an instrument or join in each week as he was offered something to play, but was clearly desperate to take part but just couldn’t allow himself. Over the weeks he came closer to playing and on the final session that I was in, he saw an ipad on his mum’s lap and started to play it. After that the doors were open and he played for most of the session on a variety of apps. In the Lewes session we had a couple of wonderful moments when one lad H, whose mum had persistently brought him along despite his refusal to take part, finally succumbed and after numerous invitations, started to play a drum. Another lad G, who similarly took many sessions to engage now seems confident in playing a number of instruments and even started an improv session.”

“It was great to do a project like this with family members and care workers present so that they could support the young people and make them feel comfortable and also in the hope that after the project they might feel confident to do some music activities with their young people. This skilled support was crucial for the success of the project.”

It’s been crucial to this project that relatives and workers present support their young people and in a way give them permission to engage with it. This was, in a way the first hurdle. The next was actually to get the young people on board. The approach I’ve developed on this and other projects is the title of this Blog – Sustaining the Offer. What this means for me is to gently offer instruments or activities to the participants, accept a refusal, but not take No as an ongoing answer so to repeat the same Offer the following session in the same way, accompanied by friendly and light touch eye contact. With several young people on these and other projects, this has paid dividends with young people moving from a rejection “No thank you” to an eager acceptance “Thank you“ of an instrument. Crucial to this has been the support of parents who rather than give up when their child doesn’t engage, continue to bring them along to the sessions thus allowing them the chance to change their mind and take part.

Achievements

We’re all very used now to what I call the extra-musical benefits of our work – confidence, teamwork, communication, self expression etc and we all, I know build these Aims into our plans. Some of us have also been introduced to the wonderful Evaluation tool Sounds of Intent (SoI) which gives us an amazing framework for looking at musical learning especially for Learning Disabled young people. However, what SoI doesn’t do is to explore or measure those extra benefits which I guess are best recorded anecdotally. Sometimes these benefits are something we aim towards with specific activities eg vocalizing with a mic, but sometimes they arise as a result of the culture and atmosphere we create in our sessions, and sometimes we don’t even know what we’ve achieved.

On a lovely Special School project I’ve run for a while we have a warm, friendly and fun group who welcomed a new member last term. This lad, unbeknown to me, doesn’t take part in group activities normally, or respond to instructions  or indeed verbalise. He quickly however took to drumming, joining in with the others taking turns and soloing and then one week when another participant was conducting extravagantly and slipped over, he clearly called out “oh dear”. The TA in the room was flabbergasted – she had never heard him vocalize before let alone use the correct and appropriate words for the situation! I’m convinced that what led to this was the pure magic of making music with other people – how he has found himself through being immersed in this inclusive, safe, expressive environment. So sometimes achievements can be surprising and unforeseen – what matters is the music and the environment.

So that’s a few thoughts and reflections that have come to me from recent work – it’d be great to hear others views on these.

Check out Graham’s  page on Youth Music Network.

You can also follow him on twitter @Didsgagarin

Website:www.gagarin.org.uk