Creative Connections #2

This year's course in a nutshell:

Participants:

Creative Leadership Team from Guildhall, Peabody Conservatory Students, El Sistema Fellows, City Neighbours High School (about 7 kids), Booker T Middle School (20 kids, choir and band), LB Jazz Band (15 middle schoolers), New Song (30 K&1^st graders), HEMS (20 1^st graders), MAWES (20 1^st graders), Tchaik strings (18 1^st -?graders).

Inspiration: Colours

Process: Launch event, daily composing sessions, dress rehearsal and two concerts

The Fellowship has been an incredible space to reflect on how music can create social change. Collectively, we have thought a lot about the merits of ensemble-based learning, intensive study, community engagement, peer teaching and other concepts that would make music education a more democratic and social experience. How can we encourage ownership, personal agency, and motivation in a world where the master-apprentice, maestro-orchestra model is predominant?

More recently, it has been our visits to projects in other disciplines in the arts that have struck us as being so engaging, full of vibrancy, vitality and utilising the student’s experiences in the world they live in. Essentially, it is the balance between creating and re-creating, engaging with different styles, genres and world traditions where the music education world can be inspired by others in the arts.

The experience of the Creative Connections course, fed into all of these thoughts and more. The atmosphere created is accepting of all musical genres and backgrounds, and participants have the delight of being a ‘musician’ first and foremost. Others expressed the same feelings I was experiencing of being rejuvenated and reinvigorated as a musician - put back in touch with our innate creativity and drawing on our own musical history.

As a general music teacher, I have done a fair amount of composing with young children using a variety of starting points but this project was so different in many ways. Being outside of the classroom freed all the participants from adhering to expected outcomes, created an informal atmosphere and removed the pressure and stress on the students. The process also allowed me to see how a teacher can work more as a leader or facilitator in a very effective way, and lessen the distance between teacher and pupil. It requires a deal of faith and a huge amount of expertise to allow such a process to happen without a detailed structure, and yet to combine so much material to end up with a high quality piece.

During the composing sessions, there was also great sense of trust in the students from the creative leadership team who waited patiently for ideas to arrive, and for participants to gain the confidence to share them. All and any material provided by the students was positively received and used as much as possible in the final piece. The composing process encouraged participants to follow their immediate feelings and gut reactions, without having to explain and overly discuss their thoughts. Those who have had conservatory training in composing mentioned the stark contrast between the ‘over-thinking’ they are used to and attending to intuitive responses and spontaneous reactions that was involved in this process.

El Sistema Fellows in the past have talked about encouraging a multiplicity of roles as a musician; citizen, artist, teacher and scholar. The Creative Connections experience has added the additional roles of composer, improviser, facilitator, rapper and dancer! I now can’t imagine being a music educator without encouraging all of these roles in my students, and I am excited by the possibilities of the musical boundaries that will be pushed by trusting in the immense creativity of children and youth. Most importantly, by involving students, parents and leaders in the same process, the community was brought together in a powerful way, and the end result celebrated the diversity and musical expressions of the participants.