Young people develop collaboration and leadership skills with South West Music School
Supporting young people to develop collaboration and leadership skills is part of encouraging self-directed learning. Working in small groups, creating work together in a non-threatening context, young people learn to support each other and can take on leadership roles when they are ready for them.
This practice write-up comes from an external evaluation of South West Music School, which looked at what SWMS achieves with its students, and how it does so. It is part of a resource collection: How South West Music School supports musical ability.
At SWMS, enabling young people to develop collaboration and leadership skills is achieved in particular through the residential element of the SWMS model and the ingredients of Enabling young people to support themselves and each other and Group and individual experiences.
Residentials represent the delivery of group experiences with which all students engage and through which they develop both general and musical collaboration and leadership skills, learning how to support themselves and each other.
Supporting evidence showing how the SWMS model delivers this outcome and ingredients is extracted from the case studies, as below.
Residentials
BEN
Ben looks forward to each residential, counting down the hours. He particularly enjoys the musical tasks undertaken in a mixed (instrumental and experience) group, working with peers over a length of time and seeing what other groups come up with. This is all about Ben supporting himself and others, developing collaboration and leadership skills – acting as leader and follower – and also developing high musical and creative process awareness. For Ben, the most enjoyable part of the February 2011 residential was ‘working with my group and creating ideas...it has encouraged me to think about writing more music myself’. And here he reflects on the July 2011 residential.
Ben finds the non-musical, team and leadership building activities on the residentials really fun and another important way of making a bond with the others. This adds to the sense of ‘feeling part of SWMS’, along with the basic residential experience: with everyone eating, socialising and playing games together, ‘having a laugh’. Being able to build on whole-child development has helped Ben to develop his self-confidence and self-esteem.
Lisa explains that Ben’s particular infectious love of music spreads to the others. While quite quiet, when working in a group he always brings the best out of people without putting himself forward too much. She sees how much he now ‘feels part of things’.
BEN & ALFIE
Beni reflects on the amount of tolerance there is, as everyone is recognised and valued for who they are as musicians. As students they’re treated in an adult way, as ‘real people who matter’. Alfie comments, ‘We all have a niche... no one is unsatisfied in themselves... you may be better at something than someone else but vice versa can be true as well, so the opportunity to work with that person becomes a pleasure, not a showcase or test of wills’. They develop collaboration and leadership skills through this working with others. Beni talks about ‘feeling humbled by everyone – and knowing I’ve got something to offer as well’.
JOSIE
Josie knows she opened other people’s eyes to rock and pop, and it was ‘really cool’ when different styles and instruments were merged in an end of residential performance. The February 2010 final performance was her ‘favourite piece of music from a residential ever!’ In her evaluation she wrote, ‘The last part of the piece had an amazing energy to it. I loved what everyone played, I loved listening to it as well as being part of it and I think we all felt the same. We worked as a group and for me that was really special.’ These SWMS residential group experiences enabled the students to support themselves and each other, developing collaboration and leadership skills.
THEO
Theo values highly the ‘great community sense’ at residentials – because everyone wants to be there. He’s gained significant musical and social learning from playing with others. He said of the October 2009 residential, ‘I would have loved to of played in the final gig although I understand everyone has to have a chance’, and was reflecting at the residential a year later that he was developing his skills in ‘working in a group learning from others, and learning to compromise’. The aspect Theo enjoyed most about the July 2011 residential was ‘Our small groups. I knew the tunes that we did so I was kind of group “leader”. Everyone has great ideas and our final things that we did were great!’ Theo’s experiences at residentials clearly contribute to him developing collaboration and leadership skills through work that enables students to support themselves and each other.
Here he talks about what he’s learnt from experiencing different ways of working on this last residential and also other recent opportunities, that feeds into him developing high musical and creative process awareness.