Keeping young people positively engaged
This blog is part of a resource called Overcoming the Challenges of Delivering Music-Making Projects (part one). Part one explores recruiting and engaging children and young people. The information comes from evaluation reports provided from projects funded by Youth Music for the charity's 2011-2012 Impact Report.
Incentives
Once projects were up and running, some organisations encountered difficulties in retaining attendance or keeping the children and young people engaged in sessions for a variety of reasons.
One project had learnt from previous experience and developed their approach to encourage participants to continue attending. This included building a stronger and more consistent relationship with the music leader and the added incentive of further opportunities beyond the project.
"We are always targeting the hardest to reach and engage NEETs and for lots of reasons, mainly normally to do with life circumstances; we lose a lot of them through the length of the course. This definitely still happened this year but we had learnt some lessons from previous years and changed the starting times to a bit later in the morning. We had a tutor who was more consistent throughout each course, with specialists coming in for certain models and lessons, this helped build better relationships with the students and made productivity better, leading to better work for gaining their accreditations. We also introduced a job/training search into their weekly sessions; this gave lots more options for us to support them into after they had finished with us."
Rewarding good behaviour
Given the nature of some of the challenging circumstances that children and young people experience, behavioural difficulties sometimes proved disruptive and many organisations were able to adapt their approaches to tackle this and ensure that participants got the most out of their experiences. One project found that:
"Two participants at the youth club had some musical experience and they really struggled being part of the group because they were having to wait for the others to get things right or were held back by the other abilities. They tended to show their frustration by misbehaving or disrupting the group and sometimes just not attending. The tutors were able to use the regular contact and relationships to work on these issues by asking them to help teach the group in reward for getting a twenty minute slot just to themselves at the end of the session."
Another project described how they tackled disruptive behaviour by empowering children to draw up their own ground rules:
"As many of the participants in this session knew each other previously, there was a great deal of ‘in fighting’ from the very beginning, and it was apparent we needed to bring them together in a positive way or ’fresh start’ to ensure they all enjoyed the course. Also, as it was an after school club it was important to recognise the children had been at school all day and needed a comfortable and enjoyable environment to look forward to. It was necessary for us to draw up some ground rules for the whole group to abide by during the sessions. These ground rules were thought up by the children so they might take ownership of them, showing respect for one another, the tutors and themselves. It was important to implement ground rule consequences on one or two occasions and by the conclusion of the course these incidents decreased significantly."
Providing shared experiences for all skills levels
Often projects find they are working with children and young people at different stages in their musical journeys and so they have had to find ways of engaging them in a shared experience. The project mentioned above found drums to be effective in this respect:
"Each session was a set of progressive activities which are designed to build musical, creative, listening and communication skills in a stealthy and subtle manner. Drums are a fantastic way to bring together participants with no previous or differing levels of experience. In this group there were some children with reasonable previous experience and then those with none at all, so it was necessary to cohere the group as a whole, giving them a new and positive shared experience."
Providing refreshments
Another project found some practical solutions to improve concentration levels and support those children and young people who were anxious about attending:
"Some young people came to sessions without eating and could not concentrate. To counteract this problem we brought in a healthy living project who were able to provide healthy snacks for participants. In addition, the most vulnerable were telephoned regularly to remind them of sessions and if they were too worried about attending they were picked up in vehicles by a youth worker who acted as their mentor for the duration of the sessions."
Engaging support from translators
Some projects found that language could be a barrier for children and young people for whom English is a second language. Generally, music sessions helped them and their families to become more involved in their communities. Interestingly, one projectalso noted that support from a translator can bring about differences between interpretation and translation, which can cause confusion, but this was overcome with some forward planning.
"Asli is from Turkey and she has found the session really helpful for herself as much as for her children. They all find it difficult to make friends and feel isolated, coming along to [the project] has really helped her find her feet in the community.
"This has not always been a smooth journey as we have had to face many cultural differences and explore the process of integration but this intentional push towards community cohesion has brought huge amounts of learning not only to the children but also to all members of our staff team, both the tutors who deliver the workshops and also to our management team.
"An example of this is the difference between translation and interpretation. We have found that engaging a community support worker for our Czech participants to help translate what the tutors are saying has been really good, however there can be issues around how that support worker might interpret what is being said and this can lead to the participants’ expectations or understanding being different to the tutor’s instructions. This means we now need to make sure we communicate any key information well in advance of the project or sessions and check that the participants know what they are coming to get involved in."
Accessing and using appropriate assistive music technology
One project highlighted the need for access to equipment that is appropriate for children and young people with highly restricted movement, in order for them to fully engage and get the most out of their experience. Their internal evaluation suggested using “more sensitive switches for young people with highly restricted movement, access to equipment that was compatible with young people’s wheel chairs (for example, via a strap or a malleable design)”. It also recommended that the organisation “develop its range of equipment, particularly in the direction of more audio-visual and audio-tactile equipment. This is likely to be highly valuable for many young people for whom music and sound alone may not be implicitly valued or enjoyed”.
It also emphasised that flexibility is essential to ensure genuinely accessible, child-led approaches that are valued by staff:
"A needs-led and flexible approach to enabling young people to access music technology is more valued by staff than a model of service delivery that is pre-designed and unable/unwilling to adapt to change when required. Child-led approaches to music sessions were felt to be more in line with the beliefs and ideologies of many staff about how to work with young people with SEN [special educational needs]."
The same report also recognised that school staff felt specialist equipment was not accessible for students.
“The school that we worked in do have a range of music technology for the purposes of enabling young people with special educational needs to make music. However, the staff feel that much of this is not accessible by many young people within the school”.
A number of organisations reported that they found their settings do in fact have a good range of music equipment, but that it goes unused because staff do not feel that they have the skills to incorporate it into their work with children and young people.
"Most SEN school-based professionals may not feel confident in using the music technology equipment that they have in schools. There is a clear need for a) the development of technology that is more accessible for staff and b) an approach to music technology service delivery that empowers staff who spend their working day onsite with young people. They are the professionals best placed to make a difference in young people's lives using music."
This two-pronged approach combining accessible music technology with appropriate skills development requires strong partnerships that are committed to skills sharing, willing to adapt to change and open in their communication. Successful partnership approaches will leave a lasting legacy of musical progression for the children and young people.
"We have encouraged and maintained a good working relationship with the educational institutes that we have visited. It is apparent that our service is very valued within these institutions and they have been very vocal in their desire to have us return. We will continue to maintain and promote this relationship, working closely with these institutes to develop bespoke music technology solutions and musical skill building workshops to help address and bridge the various skill deficits that have been apparent within the schools that we have visited."