CoMusica Inclusion observation from Brazil!!

We were very pleased to receive these thoughts and observations from Isabel Santana Gervitz, a post graduate student visiting the north east from Brazil. She sat in on some of our Arches Academy Musical Inclusion weekend sessions. It is good to see that her thoughts chime with the approach all of our practitioners try to take when working with young people.

~~Isabel Santana Gervitz August, 2015

From my point of view, there isn’t such thing as neutrality. Everyone who looks and tries to understand a situation has to do it from their own background and experiences. Therefore, I find it very important to introduce myself. I graduated almost two years ago in Psychology at the Pontifical University of São Paulo. While I was studying I started to get very interested in education, institutional work and child development. I’ve worked in public schools doing interventions and projects with the students and the staff and also worked as a teacher in a private school. I have also taken a great interest in art and in initiatives that use art as a way to encourage expression and communication.

After being in Newcastle for a month and a half, shadowing Sandy Duff (NEET Programme Leader, Youth Participation, Sage Gateshead) in different projects and activities, I was able to reflect upon everything I had the chance to see and learn. I guess I have a different perspective looking at the work that’s being made, one I’m from another country and two I also have another background of professional experiences. My time here has not been very long, so there’s a lot I don’t understand. Even so, these observations might be useful. When I look at the Arches sessions, it makes me think about D. W. Winnicott’s work. Winnicott is a well respected psychologist who studied the Early Years development and it’s relation to the shaping of the psychological structure. He links a lot of characteristics of the adult behaviour with the way environmental aspects were experienced in Early Years. His theory is highly complex and it’s not easy to make justice to his work in a few words.

Winnicott talks about holding, which is the act of offering the basic physical and emotional support for a baby to grow and develop. I bring up the holding because that was the link I found between the theory and the work that’s being done at the Arches (or the detached work that happens in the streets). The sessions aren’t really about talking and disclosing information, or sharing personal emotions. It’s more about the possibility to be in a special place, a protected and inviting place, where your way of expressing yourself is welcome. This can provide to these young people a feeling of belonging such as a chance to communicate that isn’t direct or strictly verbal. This is a way to offer holding to somebody who needs this new opportunity to experience acceptance.

The sessions also open possibilities of looking over things they know about themselves. That’s a chance to review it and perhaps even change it. For example (a rough example, though): a person who knows him/herself as someone that only does wrong things and can never achieve success can start to realize there’s some potential in his/her singing or in his/her painting. That opens a window to a new perception of one’s self. Therefore, there’s an opportunity to new positive actions to appear, and they can be felt as the realization of one’s own potential.

Another important aspect of the work being made is that it gives the chance to show to the young people their constructive power. Sometimes they can only see themselves as a destructive force because that’s the way they’ve learned to be respected among their equals. Once they find different and positive ways to express themselves that are also valued, they can start to relate to culture. Knowledge is power, therefore, to feel that you know something can make you engage in a new social role. That opens a window for learning more about your rights and the proper way to demand those rights.

All of these achievements aren’t a matter of cause and consequence. They’re much more complex and there’s no guarantee that things will turn out this way. There are lots of obstacles for a young person to pass through: face social power dynamics, defy established relationships, see themselves in a new way that makes up for the losses that came from changing what was once settled. There is also the challenge of losing the protection offered by their old role. This will not necessarily be provided by the government or any other institution. But it is still better to try to open up new possibilities than to give up and be one of society’s failures. To be able to provide a few positive experiences in someone’s life is still an achievement, even when that wasn’t the only thing that was aimed.

I think the work at The Arches has another special quality: it offers new means of expression. The way psychology sees it, education should be an activity that uses different languages and symbols to help people understand and relate to the world. When you show young boys and girl’s new ways of doing this, they’re more likely to communicate their feelings and thoughts. That’s essential, because when people can’t do that, they’ll use the resources they have and these are usually more primitive. It can be violence towards others or to themselves, behaving destructively, escaping situations through drugs use, becoming isolated in order to feel protected and so on. This acting out becomes even worse for teenagers, because they tend to be more impulsive. Instead of all that, the Arches offer music, graffiti, writing or engaging in conversation with others as new means of communicating. That’s also the reason why it is so important to create opportunities to listen to young people. This happens at Streetwise (another youth project I visited) too.

I think it’s essential that the institutions, programmes and projects can work in an articulated way. That really helps to make the services more efficient and complex, improving the chances that they meet the demands of young people. Also, the fact that lots of different kinds of professionals work together is really positive. The knowledge of each area can be useful and linked to another, contributing to take care of people in a more holistic way.

Another important aspect I noticed about the work developed in the Arches and in Streetwise, was that whilst relying on research to plan its actions; these projects also enrich their knowledge about young people, sexual behavior, drugs, crime and other related matters, through practical experience. That’s really essential because it’s a way to make this sort of actions solid, showing its value and significance.

As for the methods used at the Arches, I think it can relate to the theory of an important Brazilian thinker and pedagogue, Paulo Freire. His works are broadly political and focused on people who are in social disadvantage. From his point of view, education should be built on the exchanging of knowledge between the teacher and the student, both engaged in understanding and transforming the world. The previous knowledge and background should be the “starting point” of the process. That’s a way to empower the students and show that theirs previous experience have value and should be respected. Therefore, the first door to involve him in learning might open.

I was curious about the using of booklets to develop social skills and to improve individual issues at the Arches sessions. I think it’s great as a source of information, which sometimes is related to this sort of matter. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be more efficient to work with practical situations. As a Psychologist I tend to think that the emotional experience is usually more transformative then the intellectual one. The thinking really helps, but usually after the action. I see there are many moments when young people participate, for example, when they have lunch at the Sage’s cafeteria and when they are developing their individual plans with the tutor’s help. I think this sort of situation is really positive and maybe it could happen in an even higher frequency, followed by a conversation about that. Perhaps in this way, talking about social skills and relationships could be more meaningful as it comes from one’s experience rather than from an abstract source.

I was amazed by the honest and careful work that’s done by the Arches team. It’s really inspirational to see that there are initiatives like that going on, so socially and humanely engaged. Young people are sometimes feared for their enormous potential of construction and destruction. The fact that they question everything is challenging, but also a big changing instrument. It’s amazing that the Arches Project reminds us never to overlook that power, but to offer positive ways for it to express.

I’ve had an intense and deep experience and it made me reflect widely. For that I can never thank you enough. I’m also grateful because I felt really welcome and everybody was kind and opened. That only shows that probably young people feel as good as I did when they are with this team. If there’s any other reference or help I can provide, my door will always be opened. Thank you very much!