Tunes Together - looking back over the year
Catalyst Theatre Arts have been running Tunes Together, their monthly music making sessions for disabled children and their families for almost a year now, following a successful pilot. Here Creative Director Suzanne Oliver reflects on what has come to pass.
Why Tunes Together?
Our initial work with music in its most general sense was within a multi-arts approach that we adopt with many of our clients; we find that by using a range of art forms we can really support children and young people in trying new things and expand their experiences. This was many years ago and we’ve also lead many music specific projects and programmes of work as well such as Tiny Tunes, our Early Years sessions which have been commissioned over the years by councils, children’s centres and nurseries.
The seed of Tunes Together was actually sewn many years ago during a time when we were commissioned by the local council’s Disabled Children’s Service to facilitate holiday activities for children with a wide variety of additional needs. It became apparent that there were few opportunities for these children to participate in high quality arts activities and we found many parents phoning us directly each year to make sure that we were running holiday activities.
We began our exploration of need through a number of small projects which covered a whole range of art forms, aimed at trying out ideas and ascertaining interest and focus. We were overwhelmed by the take up and we found schools and support groups all wanted to work with us. Music was high on everyone’s list so we developed a small pilot project to try out ideas and obtain feedback and the much needed evidence required by funders.
Why whole family engagement?
We are passionate about providing opportunities for families to come together to share experiences and above all spend quality time together. In our busy lives this is something that we personally relish and there are few places that you can go where the whole family feels that they can participate, where there is something for them all. We have found this to be even more important for those families that have disabled members. Parents need a break from caring, working parents quite like spending time together doing something fun and young carers ‘sometimes (we) just want to have a nice time and not worry about being a carer’.
We wanted to ensure that there was more to this project than the participants, not that they’re not important, but for us a year-long project was too good an opportunity to miss in terms of developing young musicians and music leaders of the future, another aspect that we invest in as an organisation. We therefore designed the project to incorporate both these elements and have been delighted with the results. Seeing the confidence of our volunteer student musicians grow and how they respond musically to what they see happening in front of them has been fantastic. We’re by no means there yet but what a great start.
Tell us about your approach
With our knowledge of working within this area, we knew that we wanted the sessions to be about whole family engagement in music making and wellbeing. We also knew the approach had to be very flexible and led by the responses of the children, especially as we got to know them, what they enjoyed and how they best engaged. The added challenge was making the sessions accessible for both the disabled children but also their siblings and parents! This is where the continued reflection and dialogue with families has been key. Building creative reflection activities into every session has ensured that we really look at what has worked from every family’s perspective. That and our project group which comprises representative of the delivery team, key partners and parents.
We also needed an evaluation process and framework that worked for us. We spent a lot of time with our external evaluator looking at various child development frameworks that already exist and couldn’t find one that felt right for us so we made our own!
So, masses of flexibility within any planned activity and lots of variety: doing the same thing in lots of different ways and a whole variety of communication methods too – signing symbols.... you can imagine each session takes a long time to think about, plan and resource. In fact, this is something that we didn’t plan properly for. We totally underestimated the time it would take to do it properly. We’ve also found that we have had to move very slowly to ensure that everyone moves with us feeling supported, safe and engaged.
What have been the most memorable aspects of the project for you?
There have been so many moments where I’ve had to remind myself that I’m leading a session because something has happened and I’ve been taken aback or moved unbelievably! Like the moment when one boy sang into the microphone for the first time. Everyone was totally bowled over and we all had to spend a very quick moment not making too much of it before we moved on! Then there was the time when a Mum emailed me to tell me that her son had done something new at home and she couldn’t wait to show us all the next time we met... and then feeling extremely humbled when he showed and included me. To have that connection with these families has been a privilege and I know that our student musicians feel the same.
I think that the biggest highlight for me though has to be seeing confidence grow: the children’s, their parents, the trainee music leader’s and the musicians. The first time one of our musicians improvised in our ‘free play’ part of the session and seeing the room become still and then hearing him talk about it afterwards, how he could see the connection in one of the children’s eyes – a golden moment.