Informed personalised progression routes and how South West Music School develop them for individual students
Informed personalised progression routes are all about young people being supported to lead, and take ownership of, their own development as musicians – from an informed perspective. This perspective comes from young people being made aware, by their mentors and tutors, of all the skills they need to be a musician and all the development opportunities available that can support their progression.
This practice write-up comes from an external evaluation of South West Music School, which looked what SWMS achieves with its students, and how it does so. It is part of a resource collection Spotlighting the work of South West Music School
At SWMS, informed personalised progression routes are achieved through a combination of different elements of the SWMS model:
a) Mentoring plays an underpinning role in SWMS achieving its key outcome of providing a personalised progression route for students. Mentors provide ongoing support that helps students make sense of their different experiences and introduces them to wider musical worlds so they can make more informed choices about their futures.
b) Specialist tuition in the SWMS model is based on students’ needs and aspirations rather than fulfilling a conventional, pre-determined progression route and so nurtures individual journeys.
c) Additional activities beyond the elements of mentoring, tuition and residentials (such as masterclasses and special projects) are provided directly by SWMS and where students themselves find other opportunities, these are supported to ensure a maximum contribution to cumulative focused development along an individualised learning journey.
In addition:
d) The whole model represents not just a responsive approach to students’ individual needs and aspirations, but also, through the close knowledge that SWMS staff have of their students, a proactive response in terms of making strategic interventions.
These ways of working demonstrate the importance of three of the ‘ingredients for supporting talent and potential – Nurturing individual journeys; Making informed choices; Progressive, focussed development.
Supporting evidence showing how the SWMS model delivers the outcome of informed personalised progression routes through these ingredients is extracted from the case studies, as below.
a) Mentoring
BEN
Ben really appreciates the support mentor David is giving, helping him take an informed personalised progression route. He explains David has opened his eyes to more music – different types and sounds – and provided lots of useful contacts and information. This has included signposting him to a local rehearsal and recording venue (and also hopefully negotiating cheaper hire rates!), where Ben will be able to play with the band that he’s just been asked to join, through recommendations from others. David sees his role as being ‘someone who is on Ben’s side’. His approach to mentoring is to meet his student, find out what’s wanted and what’s needed, and to work with SWMS to fix it up. David calls it a ‘building’ process. He notes it’s very significant that in the SWMS model, the mentor stays with the student to support a personalised progression route, where the student is nurtured on their individual journey, can make informed choices and benefit from progressive-focused development.
JOSIE
Rick describes his work as mentor as ‘one of supporting, challenging and educating where necessary’. When Josie started with SWMS and subsequently at the beginning of each academic year, Rick put together with her an Individual Learning Plan according to her needs and aspirations. Within this framework to provide an informed personalised progression route, mentoring sessions varied in response to Josie’s development process.
THEO
Theo’s mentor Nicola comes to see him every two to three months to hear what he’s been doing with Hilary, his violin teacher, and identify and follow up on his learning goals. She saw straight away that ‘his musicianship is infinitely more advanced than his technical skills’ and while it’s frustrating for him, she’s encouraged him to understand there’re things ‘he’s just got to learn’.
Nicola works closely with Hilary, having telephone conversations with her and comparing notes on his progress via the written reports they provide for SWMS. This helps with providing a sense of cumulative focused development. She’s had the same musical training as Hilary, where having a ‘joined up way of thinking’ was key, and that informs their joint approach with Theo. Nicola reinforces what Hilary is doing, especially when Theo questions why he has to do something or why he has to play a certain sort of music, when that doesn’t fit in with the way he sees the world. Nicola comments, ‘I’ve helped him understand there are other ways – he doesn’t need to be defensive about himself or his music’.
She recognises that he needs ‘freedom within a nurturing environment’. SWMS supports his individual journey, and importantly both the creative home life his father provides and the encouragement he gets from his music teacher at school do this as well.
She also talks through with Theo what he’s been doing on residentials, to support him in taking away key learning points. Overall, she tries to get needed developments ‘pared down to manageable chunks’ so his targets to achieve before his next mentoring session are very specific: for example, getting 16 bars of a composition notated. Hilary and Theo always agree creative as well as technical targets to keep a balance in development.
Here’s Theo introducing a recent mentoring session in which he plays one of his compositions with Nicola.
Although Nicola is usefully another string player, what Theo really appreciates about her role is that she discusses his ideas with him, coaches him more generally and works with Lisa to provide relevant opportunities for him, such as recording with Keith Tippett and Julie Tippetts. Theo explains that as a mentor for several people, Nicola ‘moulds herself to each person to get the best out of them and what they want to do’.
Hilary sees SWMS has provided Theo with ‘a lifeline’ as without it, he would have been completely overlooked and just seen as a Grade 1 violinist, not the young person with extraordinary musicianship that he is.
b) Specialist tuition
BEN & ALFIE
Composition tutor Al reflects that working with Ben and Alfie was not about ‘planning a course’ but ‘individualising the learning’. It was about a personalised progression route, working with their compositions to tease out what difference a consideration of breath, space and dynamic could make and helping them think about how to shape and structure an hour long gig most effectively.
c) Additional activities
BEN
Ben’s parents Maggie and Steven note how he will now listen to the advice of others he gets to meet through additional SWMS opportunities, such as when Ian Matthews told him about not practising when on tour and going back to the basics when not on tour. Drummer Pat Petrillo’s advice was ‘to leave your ego at the door’, that ‘the man with the beat is not always at the front’. Hearing direct from drummers helps Ben make informed choices about how he progresses.
d) The whole model
BEN
Ben’s parents Maggie and Steven characterise the SWMS approach as asking ‘are we fulfilling your needs?’ rather than stating ‘this is what we are doing for you’. There are no stars, no grades necessary, no competition. Everyone is treated as an individual. It’s a place where a Grade 8 standard classical violinist and a Grade 4 standard drummer can work together and make great music.
BEN & ALFIE
Penny, Ben and Alfie’s mother, describes SWMS as the first educational provision they’ve experienced that has supported what Ben and Alfie are doing, and want to do, taking into consideration their individual needs rather than focusing on what the institution determines they should do (or not do). In other words, SWMS is all about an informed personalised progression route, nurturing the individual journey.
Alfie talks about SWMS as ‘a process, a support foundation and structure’. With a focus on both individual experiences and also group experiences at the residentials, SWMS engenders a culture of respect amongst young people who are all good at what they do and all interested in what each other is doing. As Penny says, ‘It’s a meeting of common minds... and there is no single ruler to measure people given its inclusive nature’.
While Ben and Alfie talk about their experiences with SWMS as ‘a process’ of development, they also recognise there’s been a particular ‘pivotal moment’, when Lisa told them to write songs. She’d felt their music might have been in danger of becoming ‘samey’, limited as it was to two instruments, and her key intervention – based on knowing them well – has made a significant shift to their creativity, as Ben, Alfie, Penny and Chris all recognise. Alfie explains, ‘Without being made to do songs, we would have become static, uninspired, like we found ourselves before SWMS. As soon as we got into songs, we had new things to explore and it opened up a new world’ – which included recording for the SWMS/Wells Cathedral School compilation CD Kaleidoscope at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.
THEO
Theo’s dad Greg explains that SWMS accommodates everyone. There is no hierarchy; SWMS is a ‘great leveller’, promoting mutual respect between students with such gifts and from such diverse genres and supporting their individual journeys.