How I Prepare for a New Participant’s First One-to-One by Paul Carroll (Lead Music Leader on Quench Arts’ Plugin Project)

One-to-one sessions are a regular and important feature of many of Quench Arts’ creative participatory music projects. In this blog I will explain why I have found this to be the case and what I do to prepare and make a new participant’s first experience a positive and useful one.

The first reason one-to-one sessions are so important is that they make a potentially intimidating new experience less so. They provide an opportunity for a person new to a project to meet a member of the artistic team and find out more about what they might achieve on the project without being thrown into a group situation where they don’t know anyone. Meeting a new person and embarking on a new activity with them alone can build resilience. We have found at Quench that in a lot of cases this can be a way in for the participant eventually starting to get involved with groups and therefore are more likely to build further resilience as well as beginning to benefit from the social interaction of music making.

The music produced in Quench group sessions tends to be a blend of the creativity of everyone attending and for those with strong ideas and this can be an exercise in compromise. Therefore, another positive of offering one-to-one sessions is to also provide the opportunity for an individual to truly express themselves. They can focus on their own ideas and create music within their preferred genre or style.

As a music leader preparing for and running a new participant’s first one-to-one, there are a few things that I can do:

1) Have the relevant equipment to hand and arrange the room appropriately.

For community projects, the participant will have completed a form with brief information about their previous musical experience and interests and the Quench directors will have met with them to discuss this further. With this information, I will have any useful instruments and amplifiers in the room and a laptop, MIDI device and relevant software for anyone interested in using this for music production and/or recording.

I will also have the project schedule and a blank copy of Quench’s wellbeing baseline form ready (hard copy and digital format).

The participant application form will have information about access needs, so I can make any arrangements to the layout of the room, such as removing trip hazards, having ear defenders, etc.

Quench’s Plugin project takes place on hospital sites in mental health wards and we don’t always have advanced information about the patients, as people are admitted and discharged on a daily basis. Hospital staff can usually brief us on any individual needs but not about musical experience. In this case, I will need to find out what equipment the hospital has there (if any) and bring everything else! I usually bring a laptop-based recording and production setup, a bass guitar, amplifier, acoustic guitar, pens and paper. Once I have met the participants, I might have to bring more or less once I have a better idea of what participants are interested in.

2) Meet and greet the participant.

If the project is taking place at Quench’s venue, it may be that new participants have only visited once before to meet the directors and won’t remember where to go. We’re on the 2nd floor so meeting a new person downstairs might alleviate any worry about finding the right room. In hospital settings, I often go around the wards to say a brief hello to everyone so that they have seen who I am before the hospital staff escort people to a session for the first time.

3) Show them around.

If the participant is coming to Quench HQ, being shown around can help put people at ease in a new building and is an opportunity to show them other rooms they might be attending groups in later in the project. They might even meet some of the other staff. This can again make them feel more comfortable coming to future sessions and maybe encourage them to try group sessions.

4) Find out about their previous musical experience, what music they like listening to and if they are hoping to achieve something specific on the project.

Here, I am beginning to show an interest in what the participant has achieved already and hopefully give them some control over their experience at Quench. I often listen to a track they like in the first session because it’s an easy way to begin. I find this to be the start of developing a respectful collaboration plus I genuinely enjoy discovering new music as well as the challenge of helping the new project member make something similar. It can also help me to prepare for next time.

5) Explain again the structure of the project and what I can offer.

The participants might have had some information already but sometimes it’s easier to understand second time round, face-to-face and to be able to ask questions. Session time is limited so it is good to be clear about the expected length and frequency of each session. As for people’s specific aims, I have to be up-front because some ambitions may not be practical, for example learning trumpet without a trumpet (and I don’t play trumpet) or producing a No. 1 hit!

6) Complete Quench’s wellbeing baseline form.

Completing Quench’s wellbeing baseline form at the beginning and end of a participant’s experience is a good way to visually demonstrate aspects such as improved musical and social confidence and perceived overall health. Some people prefer to write their own answers on paper, some use visual tools and some talk it through while I input the responses on my computer. Because I’m aiming to provide a fun distraction from illness, sometimes I find that the first session might not be the appropriate time to go into details about someone’s mental health so I might leave the form until the following week when I have built some trust and rapport.

7) Show some interest in the other things they do in a typical week.

This is another way of getting to know someone and I feel it can be an opportunity to acknowledge any other positive activities someone is involved with, as well as ongoing struggles in general. You might start a connection with a mutual eye-roll about something like hospital food or city traffic. It can also lead to songwriting ideas, for example using a poem someone has written as a starting point for a song or writing a song about bees with someone who really loves bees!

8) At the end of the session, I ask what they particularly enjoyed at Quench that day and make a plan for the next time.

Here I can make sure we do more of what they enjoyed in the future (and less of what they didn’t) and I'm continuing to value the participant’s opinions and hopefully deepening their feeling of control. It’s good to note down ideas for next time to aid planning.

Now I know more about what equipment I’m going to need next time. If I’m working somewhere like a hospital, after the first session I can find out if there is anywhere safe I can keep some of the instruments so I don’t have to bring everything to and from Quench’s venue each time. That way I can bring more of what could be useful, for example an electric guitar or bigger keyboard.

I really enjoy working on an individual basis with participants as everyone is so different. It challenges me as a musician and a facilitator to meet the needs of everyone I work with in the best way possible.