Supplementary schools collaborate through music
This is about a new initiative we’ve run through our “Music Forge” project which developed some new partnership working and gave our musicians a chance to work with a whole new cohort of young people.
I’ve been working on Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust’s (NMPAT) Musical Inclusion Programme since 2012, and before that on the county’s Youth Music Action Zone, and we are now well into the second year of our Fund B project, “Music Forge”. However, I also work for the Association of Northamptonshire Supplementary Schools (ANSS), and for some time had been thinking about how we could bring some of the benefits of our work on “Music Forge” to the young people attending the various supplementary schools around the county.
The supplementary schools, for those who may be unfamiliar with this unique and very special provision, are locally volunteer-run schools running throughout the weekend that provide education in language, culture, and the arts for children from a whole range of ethnic minority groups in the county. For example we have a Punjabi School, a Serbian School, two Latvian schools, a Chinese school and many more besides.
At ANSS we had been looking at ways to encourage the development of young people’s leadership skills.... and we have been exploring several different avenues for this, including ways of accrediting the young people’s contributions on this front.
Could music be way of delivering something really special for them in this arena?
Well, I had no idea how to proceed until I attended a “Music Forge” training session led by jazz guitarist and music animateur, Paul Griffiths. What struck me about Paul’s approach was his ability to integrate the music specialists in the room with the non-specialists (e.g. such as myself), get everyone collaborating on a joint creative endeavour, and enable everyone to gain benefit and a sense of achievement. Crucially, there were clearly ways in which his approach could help develop the leadership of the children attending the supplementary schools.
So… taking this idea forward, we discussed the process and content of a possible set of workshops with Paul, and came up with the idea of running a two-day weekend session for our Youth Forum with part of the remit being that the young people would develop their own musical material which they could then perform themselves (and, crucially, unaided by the adults) at the ANSS Awards Ceremony the following month.
We advertised amongst the forum and got a solid cohort of 15 students hailing from the following schools:
- Russian
- Polish
- Tamil
- Arabic
- Ghanian
On a cold Saturday morning at the beginning of November, we assembled a large collection of instruments at the chosen venue (generously donated free of charge by another of NMPAT’s partners, Hospital and Outreach Education), picked Paul up from the station, and awaited the arrival of the students, many of whom had never met each other before.
To be honest, I was a little worried…. but I needn’t have been, as Paul’s workshopping skills kicked in… and together with one of our Musical Inclusion Team members, Kate Rounding… a fantastic weekend of creative music-making ensued.
At the end we had a recording of a song composed by the group – “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work” – and a Cuban percussion piece under their belts ready for performance at the Awards Ceremony.
The young people’s performance at the Awards Ceremony was fantastic and I was impressed by how well they remembered the piece when practising earlier in the day – remember, they’d had no chance to practise in-between time following the sessions with Paul. And, even better, we’ve been able to refer some of them onto another Youth Music funded project, the Concept Project, run by Pedestrian in venues across the East Midlands.
For me, some of the standout elements of the project and things we’ve noted for the future include:
- ensuring a wide range of high quality instruments are available (e.g. good quality samba kit, electric guitar, basses, keyboard and handheld percussion, PA, microphones etc.)
- an experienced workshop practitioner who can use “workshop games” effectively and target them to meet specific objectives (e.g. development of leadership skills)
- canny use of technology to help “beginners” get the most out of their instrument and aid creativity (e.g. using guitar amp effects – flanging, delay etc. – to build interesting textures and soundscapes)
- trusting the young people to organise themselves and take on the responsibility of delivering a performance to a large audience of well over 200 people
- open-minded and supportive staff across both organisations who helped me to drive the project forward.
Perhaps most wonderfully in many ways, the whole issue of diversity wasn’t an topic for consideration on the project. And I feel this was a good thing… the acceptance and support between the young people was clear and obvious… and there from the beginning… and didn’t need explicit nurturing by any of the staff or music leaders involved. But, judging from the feedback from the young people, it was obviously a very powerful approach and formula… and so we are now talking seriously about how we can use this type of model to expand NMPAT’s and the Music Education Hub’s approach to diversity and social change across Northamptonshire and Rutland.
Certainly exciting times ahead.. and a panacea to some of the less desirable political developments of recent months both here in the UK and across the Atlantic!!!
You can find out more about the work of our Musical Inclusion Programme and the current project, Music Forge, here: http://www.nmpat.co.uk/music-education-hub/Pages/musical-inclusion-programme.aspx
You can find out more about the work of ANSS here: http://www.anss.org.uk/