Hackney Music Progression Sessions - Project Reflections
Hackney Music Progression Sessions - Project Reflections
by HMPS Music Tutor Toby Davies
Hackney Music Progression Sessions (HMPS) was a 9 month project, consisting of two terms of weekly music making opportunities for excluded KS3 young people who were based at the New Regents Pupils Referral Unit, its KS4 providers, as well as those at risk of exclusion in mainstream schools across Hackney. The project was a partnership programme between Hackney Music Service and Progression Sessions.
The sessions took place on Tuesday evenings with the PRU students and Saturday mornings with those in mainstream schools, bringing both groups together from term two onwards. Sessions were delivered in varied combination of group workshops and 1 to 1 instrumental and technology tuition in all aspects of modern popular electronic music. Many of the young people involved either lacked access to music provision or educational engagement with this kind of music. Below, one of the music tutor’s, Toby Davies reflects on his experience across the project.
Going into the Tuesday sessions it was difficult to predict how the participants would receive the programme, given that they were all coming from challenging circumstances in which they had developed varying degrees of resistance to mainstream educational environments. The first session introduced them to the basics of music production, and gave the young people a chance to meet the staff and the other participants. It started with a jam session, which allowed them to create melodies and rhythms on the fly. The majority of communication was musical rather than verbal – this created an understanding in the room that would not have been possible via conventional conversation, with the participants taking rhythmic, melodic and structural cues from each other. The jam session climaxed with an appearance from Karryn, who seemed shy at first, but managed to overcome this shyness as she picked up one of the microphones and improvised a melody that turned a jam session into a legitimate piece of song-writing.
The rest of the day was spent constructing instrumentals on Logic Pro X. Whilst a little tentative with each other, everyone seemed keen to get involved, and come the end of the first session they all had at least a snippet of music they could play back. I found that the young people responded really well to listening to their favourite artists and using them as inspiration for their ideas.
Throughout the project we would sit down after each session and evaluate what we had worked on during the afternoon, and how we could adapt to get the best out of the young people. Inconsistencies of circumstance would sometimes manifest themselves in attendance issues, however within these post-session meetings we were able to address this, and decided between us to implement carousel-style activities, with the aim of recording a radio show at the end of the term. We felt that this approach would be a good way of encouraging attendance whilst nurturing the creativity of the participants towards a common goal.
We saw marked progress from a good number of the students. Codee seemed most comfortable behind the drum kit, however when he was introduced to the studio setting and using Logic Pro X, turning his hand to production, writing lyrics and rapping came naturally, and he left at the end of the term with the aim of improving his production skills, so that he could make instrumentals to give to other rappers.
It was very interesting to see the dynamic between Sharday and Chardenne, especially when they were in the studio with me. It seemed that although they were slightly reluctant to share in the room with the group, when they were in the studio environment the ideas and the camaraderie really flowed.
Interestingly, when asked to write lyrics, all three of these young people decided to express emotions of positivity, and the hope that we could all work towards the betterment of ourselves, and of society as a whole.
There were breakthrough moments involving members of the student cohort who I didn’t work with which fed positively into the atmosphere amongst both the young people and the practitioners. Garvey was another candidate who was initially quite shy but whose creative input really blossomed throughout the term, culminating in his appearance on “Progression Sessions Radio”, where he played two tracks from his work in progress debut EP, and in an interview expressed the intention to finish the EP and direct a music video as a promotional tool.
Kharryn’s confidence grew palpably as the term went on: working with my colleague Abbey, she learnt the process of turning song-writing into recording, and playing her composition on the radio show in the final session in front of everyone else on the course felt like a big step.
My conclusion from working on the Hackney Music Progression Sessions course was that it was of enormous benefit to both the participants and the practitioners. As stated before, the young people on the project came from varied and difficult circumstances, so learning on the job was a must as we strove to implemented processes that would maintain the attention and concentration of young people whose lives are very likely affected by inconsistencies. The fact that we would get feedback from the participants’ teachers saying that their concentration at school had been positively affected by the therapeutic nature of jamming, DJing, writing, producing and recording music was extremely satisfying, and leads me to believe that the continuation of the project- and projects of this ilk - is essential for young people facing complicated educational trajectories.
I really enjoyed working on the programme and with such a dedicated team of colleagues and young people.
Hackney Music Progression Sessions is a partnership between Hackney Music Service and Progress Sessions Ltd. For further information: musicservice@learningtrust.co.uk 020 3076 1534