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How better can musicians work off their anxiety about technology's reappropriation of art than by taking that art bodily back into the supposedly innocent environment of a primary school? Of course, the excitement such educational projects arouse, testifies to music's ability to bridge gulfs - to dissolve, in fact, the categories of adult and child. But this is far from meaning that even a virtuosic performer will be able automatically to communicate with children.
The reason for getting theoretical about something as practical-sounding as a workshop is to establish the aims of your project rather than fall back on the myth that music "speaks for itself". A school may require from a visiting group anything from pure entertainment to a thorough going compositional collaboration over a number of weeks. Even this latter may comprise an open-ended process with no 'product' to show for itself on the one hand, or it may be geared towards performance.
The national curriculum can provide useful pegs to hang your work on
Michael Posner has run workshops for the London Mozart Players and City of London Sinfonia, and being organized for him means more that just time-tabling the sessions. It means going in with an overt aim, and understanding the aim of the school. It may be more constructive to see yourself as supplementing a teacher's work than as offering some attemptedly sexy alternative to it. Not that this need mean slotting into a particular National Curriculum requirement. "The national curriculum can provide useful pegs to hang your work on", says Michael. "You're going to do what you want to do, but why waste the chance of relating it to the children's longer-term coursework?" Teachers are likely to reciprocate by participating in the workshop, though equally there seems no reason to undervalue the opportunity the workshop may give them for a half-day's break.Worth avoiding, though, is a common-room scenario in which the workshop-giver remarks breezily to the permanent staff on how easy the children are to work with. The response may be a raised eye in Hampstead, or daggers drawn in Stepney.
It's quite hard to be disruptive when everyone is the group has an instrument to strike.
A percussion ensemble is by definition well-equipped to make a success of a workshop project. As well as dealing in instruments that are easy to make sounds on, it can move lithely between different ethnic musics. Ensemble Bash member Richard Benjafield talks about the way groups of children can be segregated according to different families of instruments, how communication games can be set up between them, and later how different rhythmic motifs can be layered on top of one another to form a rich blend out of simple materials. The common experience is a great sense of release, with any overhanging anarchy easily contained by rounding the session off with a traditional question-and-answer slot.On the negative side, a lack of responsiveness is more of a problem for Richard that disruptive behaviour. "It's actually quite hard to be disruptive when everyone is the group has an instrument to strike. The crucial thing about the workshop is for professional musicians to be seen not simply sitting beside their instruments, but to express what their music actually does for the." "The first half-hour is decisive" adds Michael Posner. "Once you've got them thinking one way about the music they're about to make, it's hard to change tack".
Developing presentational skills
The jolt schools themselves have been given recently is the inclusion of music as a national curriculum at primary level, where the numbers of specialist teachers has dwindled over the last few years. One of the activities of 'Children's music Workshop', run by Jane Pountney, is to send musicians trained in education and communications into schools so as to help not so much the children directly as the teachers to cope with this newresponsibility
A teacher who thinks she only knows how to lead songs from a piano may lack the confidence to teach composition, explains Jane. "Some of the terminology and notation cause intimidation in the non-specialist and this blocks them from moving more directly into practical music making and composition." Her organizations other main activity is to create links between schools and professional orchestras - again by means of an education-specializing performer who will mediate between the two.A couple of young maestrini were allowed to conduct the early part of the proceedings
A recent achievement has been a project (this orchestra's first to date) by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Simon Rattle at a Westminster Primary School. After a performance given to the school by the pupils on the projects on themes based on the Pastoral Symphony, they attended a rehearsal of the work given by the orchestra itself. (As Rattle's train was late, a couple of young maestrini were allowed to conduct the early part of the proceedings). Non of this would have made sense without preparations which involved sessions initially with teachers alone, where the aims and techniques of the project were talked through.You'd be surprised how wound up cleaning staff can get over un-bargained-for untidiness
Finally the voice of the schools themselves, whose only regrets seem to revolve around the lack of funding to make these projects more widely available. Mara Chrystie, Headteacher of Hermitage Primary School in Wapping , takes every opportunity to invite visiting artists. "If I had any specific advice it would simply be on the practical level of being aware, for example, of how tightly timetabled schools are. If an artist is five minutes late in setting up, it's a very stressful five minutes for the teacher to improvise for. And you'd be surprised how wound up cleaning staff can get over un-bargained-for untidiness". Mara doesn't expect artists necessarily to be familiar with a school's particular policies on equal opportunities - "half the point of the exercise is that ... thank God, they're not just another teacher" - but it helps to realize that a class teacher may want to intervene on behalf of a quiet, left- out character. Just because the workshop is a new experience doesn't mean the children fall back into equal starting positions.Bullet points
1. There are two aims, yours and the school's. Do they fit?2. Liaise with school staff on informal as well as formal levels prior to a project.
3. Be aware that music in education is a thoroughly theorized and researched field.
4. Be logistical, how long, how many, what sort of instruments do children have at their disposal?
Nick Benda
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