It's the last day of the summer holidays and I'm in a long queue of people outside Chetham's School of Music. There's a feeling of excitement, and as I speak to the teacher in front of me, I'm struck by how friendly they are. As I walk through the door and head for the registration desk, it is packed with people. ‘How many people are here?’ I ask. ‘About 300,’ replies the smiley Music Mark staff member on the desk. For a regional conference about music education, it is an impressive turnout.
This is a regional Music Mark conference primarily for music hub/service teachers and leaders in the north-west. It's been several years in the planning, due to Covid, but the Music Mark team are certainly displaying dedication to their cause and commitment to their ‘Talk into Action’ equity, diversity and inclusion movement.
The conference was inspiring from the start with its ‘call to action’ welcome and keynote. Chief executive Bridget Whyte set the scene with sincerity and authenticity before the inspirational, moving and humorous keynote from disabled musician Kris Halpin, who also performed live on his MiMu gloves. Haplin's music is rather addictive –I've already added it to our school listening playlist and will be sharing it with the children this term. He valuably referenced the Social Model of Disability, arguing that instruments need to be designed around the needs of individual players because players have different needs.
The day was packed with over 22 workshops to choose from and was wrapped up by a closing keynote from Music Mark Champion Faz Shah. A violinist, beatboxer, composer, and actor, Shah gave a thought-provoking talk on how music affects our behaviour and how music is meaningful to different people. He shared three steps in his teaching philosophy: teach with diversity; create inclusively; and reflect individually. His comments about music and the Muslim faith were particularly helpful to me and will inform and improve my own music teaching in classroom music sessions. Below are some highlights from the other conference session I was able to attend:
All Things Equal: Gender Equality and Music Education – Kate Lowes
Kate Lowes is head of programmes at Brighter Sounds, a music development organisation based in Manchester. She has done much work around gender equality including studying this at master's level. The campaign ‘Both Sides Now’ launched in 2017 and aims to encourage positive change in terms of gender equality in the music Industry. The statistics presented by Brighter Sounds are shocking:
‘We launched Both Sides Now as a response to the low levels of female participation across many of our music programmes, and an urgent need for change. Only 2 per cent of UK songwriters and composers registered with PRS are women living in the north (PRS), only 15 per cent of record labels are majority owned by women (AIM) and only 32.2 per cent of employees across the industry are female (CC Skills).’
In this session, Brighter Sounds’ cornerstone document All Things Equal – A Manifesto for Gender Equality in Music was fully explained along with wonderful additional content from a Brighter Sounds supported artist, who gave some personal insights into her own music education and how she strives to make her own teaching more accessible and inclusive.
Delegates at the Music Mark North West Conference © DOMINIC C WALSH
First Thing Music – Marion Hinds, Lindsay Ibbotson and Susan Robertson
This session presented the ethos and content of a wonderful project which began in 2018 called First Thing Music. The programme trains non-specialist classroom primary school teachers to do a daily music session based on the Kodály approach. The session is quick and easy and focuses on 1) Beat, 2) Beat and Rhythm, and 3) Beat, Rhythm and Pitch, using traditional folk melody and rhyme. The Kodály approach of ‘preparation, presentation and practice’ is also at the heart of the programme.
The session explored ‘social cognition’ and its relevance to how the programme is taught. The stages presented in the session were social referencing, joint interaction, and joint action. Children learn greatly from each other when making music together in a group setting, as activities are being modelled constantly around them. Several hub leads gave personal testimony of seeing the amazing power of the programme to influence real change for music education in a school, but also added benefits such as supporting phonic development, early reading, and social development.
Rebuilding Ensembles in Schools and Music Centres – Stuart Hazelton, Abbey Blackledge, Emma Williams, Fi Simpson
This session outlined some wonderful activities that the represented music centres championed over lockdown and covered how they changed their practice post-Covid. This was a ‘work-in-progress’ session where delegates were invited to contribute throughout so that best practice could be continually shared. We heard from inspirational leaders who were clearly very passionate about their work and displayed exceptional commitment.
Some interesting music ensemble success criteria outlined included:
- The need for holistic music making
- Having social aspects
- Open access
- Collaboration with other groups
- Meeting new people.
Abbey Blackledge, Burnley Music Centre lead, talked about how moving venues to a primary school helped to rebuild numbers. The primary school hadn't been accessing services from the provider (it now does), so this brought new children to the centre. New ensembles were created for very new players, called ‘inspire ensembles’. Assistant head at Bolton Music Service, Stuart Hazelton, demonstrated how they had consolidated their ensembles so that there are fewer groups but far more children in them – creating a bigger sound but also consolidating resources. It was stressed that building from the bottom up is key, as is the value of alumni providing inspiration to younger players.
Fi Simpson, Music Mark's communications and marketing manager, offered some helpful advice on marketing for music hubs and services, which included:
- Make the sign-up process easy to navigate
- Include posters with QR codes
- Target local community groups
- Run ‘invite a friend’ schemes
- Ask parents and teachers to share emails with contacts
- Offer social events/performances/taster sessions
Concluding thoughts
This was an outstanding conference from which I gained a lot as a practitioner. Exhibitors were constantly referenced and thanked for their support, and delegates were encouraged to visit them. The food was lovely, and Music Mark acknowledged the somewhat overcrowded lunch service (humility is always impressive). The positive atmosphere throughout the day gave me a real boost at the start of term – the delegates were a fantastic group of gifted music educators who, despite the challenges we all face in music education, were passionate about the term ahead and enabling all their students to truly thrive.
