October Half-Term Face-to-Face Sessions! Great While It Lasted!""

Whilst many of our colleagues who work in schools have been gradually returning to delivering face-to-face music sessions, for those within NMPAT's Musical Inclusion Team working with participants in either, what the government have now termed "multi-use community venues", or who are classed as "extremely vulnerable to COVID-19", the return has been much more difficult.

So, over October as things seemed to be easing up, we arranged a busy programme of face-to-face social-distanced music activities, mainly at our venue in Northampton, during the half-term week consisting of:

• Our weekly Wellingborough Music Club, especially relocated to Northampton just for that week.
• Song-writing and ukulele sessions with young carers we had previously been working with us as part of a 12-week project in partnership with Northamptonshire Carers. This was their final set of sessions for the project... so a great way to finish!
• A set of "blended" (i.e. some online components as well as meeting face-to-face) ukulele sessions for looked-after-children in partnership with Northamptonshire County Council.
• A session for young people (who live in households where there is substance/alcohol abuse) to help them explore how music can help them become more resilient, more relaxed and centred, and thereby better able to cope with their challenging home lives.

Musically, the team and young people felt the sessions went well... and for one of the ukulele sessions, we pushed out the boat a bit and invested in some Posca pens for a short diversion into ukulele decorating! For the music leaders, in particular, this was actually quite an emotional week for many of them, representing as it did a brief return to some sort of normality. 

Whilst we don't think we could ever say that Zoom sessions should ever become the new norm in the long-term.... for those young people involved, all of whom had been working with us over the first lockdown, many of whom starting playing an instrument for the first time over Zoom, the music leaders were bowled over by how much progress had been made.... and bear in mind, of course, this was the first time they had heard the young people play together properly in an ensemble since March... and in some case, ever!

Disappointingly, we are now (Nov 2020) back under lockdown... and many things are on a hiatus until December... at least in the real world. However, our experience over half-term has proved that we were right to push ahead with all our Zoom sessions back in March, however difficult things may have been at times.... and, moreover, in doing so, we've clearly been able to progress the musical skills of young people in a really positive way.

(We didn't do any formal recording in the half-term session... but some simple ad-hoc iPhone recordings were made of the results which are up on our SoundCloud page and embedded here!)