Tom's Youth Leadership Blog

A thoughtful and interesting blog from Jack Drum Arts Young leader, Tom -

I have been a part of the band Runaway Samba since 2013, something that I have always found enjoyment in. Although my role within the band has only increased over time, getting more and more involved in roles that were above simply being a participant. In particular, by becoming a young leader.

As a young leader within Runaway Samba, I have been given many opportunities to work within a team of other young people in order to teach the rhythms that I have learned within my time playing Brazilian Samba. These workshops that I have helped to facilitate have been given across my local area (County Durham) as well as further afield such as in Whitby (at a music festival called Musicport) and Manchester. These workshops have also been delivered to people across a wide variety of age ranges, from children as young as 8, to adults (such as those at the Women’s Institute in Sedgefield).

Being a young leader has allowed me to improve (and even gain) many skills. One of the skills that I have been able to improve is my communication, by working with a wide range of people of varying ages and abilities, I have been able to learn how to change the way that I communicate in order to reflect the needs of the people that I am working with. Not only has this influenced my skills as a leader but also allows me to communicate more effectively in my day-to-day life.

Another skill that being a young leader has allowed me to improve is problem resolution, some of the workshops that we have facilitated as young leaders have been ‘drop in’ workshops. This means that people can come and go as they wish. This means that during the workshop we have people who have joined part way through, thus we need to be able to take the responsibility for that and solve any issues that they may be having when it comes to playing such as getting up to date with what has been learned so far. Problem solving is yet another skill that also comes in useful in every day life as it adds to my ability to be independent.

A third skill that I am going to discuss that I have learned through my time as a young leader is the ability to work with the others in my team to plan the workshops we will be running. Not only does this include the skill of being able to plan ahead, stick to the plan, and manage my time effectively, but it also helped my ability to work as part of a team and share responsibilities with multiple people.

Being a young leader has also allowed my confidence to improve as it had allowed me to gain a better understanding of the music that I play, but also has allowed me to get more used to teaching people and taking on more important roles in which people are relying on me. This has been useful to me outside of my role as a young leader too as it has made me more confident when talking to others and taking on leadership roles in other aspects of my life such as at college.

Due to my role in teaching others, I have been able to gain a better understanding of the music that I am playing within Runaway Samba, as by teaching others I have been able to discover more about the technical aspects of the music through breaking it down in order to teach it. I feel that because of this, my abilities as a musician has progressed, as well as my skills as a participant within percussion based music.

All of the things I have mentioned above have been enjoyable aspects of being a young leader, though I have also especially enjoyed taking on this role as it has allowed me to improve my skills and get experience in working with people of different ages and abilities, all of which I feel will be very useful to me in the future. I have also enjoyed this as all of the learning that I have completed due to this experience has seemed more like I was doing something that I enjoy and can be enthusiastic about.

Despite all of this there are also challenges to being a young leader, though I feel that this is not a negative thing as overcoming challenges is what is needed in order to learn and improve. A main example of this is the fact that there are often times (especially when working with young people) when you have to take a proactive role in teaching whether that be in terms of giving extra help, or when trying to keep control when those you are teaching are being particularly rowdy.

Another challenge is that in some workshops we need to work with people of a variety of ability levels, and this means that we need to be able to adapt our teaching methods and the difficulty levels of what we are teaching during the workshops, which at times can feel like a difficult task.

I have loved being a young leader and intend to keep on doing this sort of thing in the future as I feel that not only has it allowed me to improve technically and in an educational manner, but also as an individual.