Children as Leaders - Creativity and Confidence
Plymouth Music Zone is a broad-reaching project that has developed from its roots as a Youth Music Action Zone, nearly 20 years ago (!) when it was working primarily with children and young people. Currently the project engages with approximately 60% adults (18+) and 40% children and young people, which is a significant shift in focus. However, this has enabled our core team and music leaders to broaden their skills and ways of working and we have the privilege of being able to work across the community learning about one another through music and in many cases, significantly improving peoples’ lives and wellbeing. We now even employ a full-time Intergenerational Coordinator (Rob Tilsley) who works with both young and older people including several forums which help steer the direction of our projects.
Those music leaders who work with both adults and children have shared some of their experiences of their learning about how children often inspire the adults around them with their creativity and openness to new ways of working. In many ways, children have less fixed ideas about what music ‘is’.
Many adults we work with speak of negative experiences of music education in schools or as children. For example, being told not to sing – to mime in a group - being told they were ‘tone deaf’ - not singing at home with family or having had no access to instruments or lessons etc.
Many of the adults we connect with often speak about people having to be a ‘proper’ musician in order to engage with any kind of participatory music and that they might not feel welcome and lack confidence to take part. This is a ‘learnt’ thing – something that happened to them to make them feel this way.
Many of these adults are teachers or LSAs - educating children and providing their initial access to music in schools, yet they hold many fears about their own musicality.
There are, of course, exceptions – not just an ‘age thing’, but about a willingness to take risks and experiment e.g. in care homes / respite services etc.
Which Projects?
A few examples of projects and settings where adults and children are working together:
Schools: All our work in schools involve adults – support workers, teachers and parents. We witness the interplay between them with the children when creating music together and often the gradual unfurling of the adults from their shells! With so much pressure on school staff to cover the curriculum, assessments of children, the school’s overall performance ratings etc etc, these precious opportunities often help everyone to let off some steam.
Our ‘Rhythm and Respect’ (Big Lottery funded) intergenerational project brings together young people with communities and individuals they might not otherwise ever connect with. E.g. adults with learning disabilities, blind and visually impaired adults (and some of their guide dogs!), older people in residential care homes to name a few.
Our community events (we have 5 large events annually) highlight the breadth of our work and provide a genuine and joyful opportunity for people to be inspired by one another’s music. For example, our ‘Party in the Park 2018’ brought together approximately 300 people from local primary and secondary schools and residential care settings, local hospice (St Luke’s) as well as The Stroke Association and our ‘Moving Sounds’ integrated music and dance group (see main photo).
Other project examples (too many to include after 20 years!) include our partnership with Plymouth Domestic Abuse Service. See previous post: https://tinyurl.com/y993vn3d
During one of our in-house events, one of our 15-yr old participants was very moved by a piano performance by (then 84-years young) blind musician Pat Tansell (one of our Music Advocates). She also heard him play Electric Guitar and was completely blown away by his talent. He expressed a wish to help her further with her music and vice-versa. This inspired the thread of a story in an animated film we created as part of our Arts Council England funded project, 'Pass-the-Baton' by Oscar winning animator, Virpi Kettu (!) in the spring of this year.
The beautiful ‘Pass-the-Baton’ film can be seen here, which was inspired by the connections made between the two through their music, as well as other participants of all ages:
Notes and examples of ways in which children inspire and lead adults…
- Children can help adults be less self-conscious and lose some of their inhibitions – leading by example, play and experimentation
- Adults will push themselves out of their comfort zones in order to support/encourage a younger participant, in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.
- Adults don't have to lead everything. It's important not to underestimate children’s ability to be leaders themselves…there is often so much front-led learning currently in school, so opportunities for children to take the lead can be very empowering. This aligns with teaching styles which promote the idea of enabling children to learn for themselves and not be ‘taught’ every step – independence, curiosity and confidence to test things out. E.g. in an early years pre-school setting in Plymouth (part of our current ‘Changing Tunes’ Youth Music Programme), children took turns to conduct their group (children and early years practitioners), including exploring dynamics and clearly stopping the group who were playing a range of hand-percussion instruments. The adults were also learning to pay attention to the child in the driving seat!
- Adults don't always behave well either....Sometimes children model excellent group behaviour, for example, asking adults to stop chatting during a workshop. They also often really want to help set up, distribute or pack away instruments, which is sometimes observed by staff as different from their normal behaviour and encouraged.
- Teaching the teacher - Children can teach adults (an example was through a young person who became the teacher’s trainer on iPad music sequencing. This was through our Music Booster Training funding from Youth Music in 2017, where we turned things on their head so that the longer-term effect of the training was that the teacher needed reminders from the child (who had high support needs) on how to use the programme and how to teach this effectively to the rest of her peers – child as teacher.
- Being in the moment - Children often have the ability to be more ‘present’ than adults in activities, particularly when it’s new to them. They can help adults focus by modelling this and in a sense giving them the permission they need to play.
