Drawn from the structure and findings of participants in a breakout group at:

Musical Inclusion – Evaluation & Networking Module – GATHERING TWO – November 2013

Kathryn Deane (Sound Sense, lead organisation), Tamsin Cox, Rob Hunter, Anita Holford, Phil Mullen


See also two handouts: WFD groups and grid and WFD Gilbert SP and Artworks

Introduction

The purpose of your Musical Inclusion (Minc)Workforce Development strategy is, by definition, to support your overall MINC Project strategy and indeed will contribute to that of your main organisation.

Relevant stages in strategy-building include:

  1. Clarifying your remit:
  1. Values and Terminology. ‘Training’ is often seen as confined to training courses. CPD focuses on the individual. WFD implies an organisational as well as individual responsibility. WFD has many forms, from a ‘Go and See’ visit, to reading a book, to collective reflective practice, and to an extended training course.
  2. ‘Mission’: Minc grant-holders have a remit to WFD across their traditional geographic area (and sometimes wider), for those who are working with CCC. What strategy works here?
  1. Information Gathering

a. What do effective MINC practitioners need to be able to do?

b. What is your professional thinking on ‘how MINC practitioners develop?’

c. SWOT analysis on 2012-13 activity. What in your project has gone well and how do

you know? What has gone less well and why might that be?Is the external

environment changing in ways which might affect your WFD strategy?

  1. Strategic issues: these seemed to include
  1. Who is this WFD for?
  2. What are the knowledge, skills and attitudes/qualities required of MINC musicians?
  3. What range of structures do we need to enable practitioners’ ’ development?
  4. A ‘colour wash’ across the debate recognising that many Minc grant-holders are struggling to meet their WFD remit and find it difficult to encourage practitioners to engage in CPD. This disengagement is not limited to music, nor to CCC, but is widely recognised.

Who is the WFD for?

The short answer is everyone who comes into contact with CCC. It is about us and the people who work on projects, workers in partner organisations, and people who have regular or daily contact with young people.

  1. Your own staff team. Some projects had successfully invested time and resources in creating a strong core musical team. Action included:
  1. Knowing what they wanted in a MINC practitioner. If a ‘regular ‘ practitioner didn’t have these qualities or want to develop them, having the courage to confront this and say there was no place for them in this particular programme.
  2. Helping musicians assess their strengths and areas for development in MINC work through effective dialogue ion supervision.
  3. Establishing affordable but effective contracts with MINC practitioners which included e.g. good team-working practice, collective planning and reflective practice time, systems which only paid fees on receipt of necessary paperwork, regular individual supervision, assessment of individual learning, training and development needs.
  1. The staff of musical partner organisations. How does a MINC lead require/encourage partners to invest in/ learn from others’ appropriate WFD activity?
  1. Non-musical partners i.e. LAC social workers, youth workers, youth offending team workers, PRU teachers etc.. The particular purpose of WFD here might be
  1. Co-working and team work skills related to your project
  2. Clarity about the purposes and characteristics of MINC work. Is the work simply ‘entertainment’ or does it have much more potential for their particular professional remit?
  3. Music Services. How can developmental structures be set up so that
  • Music Service staff (generally or those who wish to engage) can be involved in dialogue on the purpose of MINC work?
  • How can MINC and non-MINC musicians best learn from each other?
  1. Emerging musicians in the area. How can we contact and engage with potential players in our MINC strategy. This might include: semi-professional musicians wanting to build careers in music, musicians in organisations we don’t yet work with, young musicians, musicians coming off college courses etc? The former Music Leader role?
  1. What do we think of ArtWorks finding that artists from other disciplines might join our WFD strategy?

What should a Musical Inclusion musician be able to do?

It is the Minc grant-holder’s responsibility to find good musicians to join in with Minc projects, and to make sure they are good enough to deliver on the project brief. This means (frequently) that the CPD need isn’t about music, it is about other things. An example would be HOW you use music-making to raise young people’s aspirations – not assuming that because you are music-making you ARE raising their aspirations.

We assumed that good quality MINC work built on effective core community music skills. Were there any additional knowledge, skills and qualities/behaviours which MINC musicians needed? Possibly

  1. Attitudes and values: how do we view the children and young people in challenging circumstances with whom we are working? What implications has this for how we work with them?
  2. What are the principles underpinning our pedagogy? How do we view Artist Pedagogy?
  3. Attachment theory: understanding what causes certain behaviours and how best MINC practitioners might work with these.
  4. Knowledge of the systems affecting the lives of certain target groups e.g. looked after children, young offenders.
  5. Emotional literacy inc. an understanding of one’s own emotional reactions as well as the behaviour of the young people you are working with and using this understanding to work more effectively.
  6. Team work: the depth of teamwork needed for effective MINCwork
  7. Communications: both with young people and with adults in the life of the child.
  8. Creating physical and emotional environments conducive to MINC work
  9. Groupwork: development and management
  10. Knowledge of the evidence base for effective MINC work and how to contribute to it.
  11. The ability to make the case about the value of music making and what it can do. This is about learning the language and context of partners, and framing arguments to suit. Partners have values too! But they may have different values to ours. The value of what we do is not only through people watching it – it is through the articulation of our plan and explanation – why we’re doing what we’re doing, and what it is intended to achieve.
  12. Qualities: able to build rapport; warm and optimistic but firm and able to hold boundaries; resilient; demonstrable commitment to the young people.

Structures for developing effective Musical Inclusion practitioners

We need to be sure that Minc practitioners learn in a variety of ways from different practitioners and organisations – not that they only learn ‘our way of doing’. They need to know what they’re good at – and what their limitations are. It is tempting to say ‘yes I can do that’ if a potential work offer is there; but you should not unless you know what you’re doing. CCC are too vulnerable to be guinea pigs.

  1. Opportunities for inspiration: through speakers, through visits to exciting practice etc.
  2. Co-working. Often selective i.e. managers strategically creating a pair/team based on the needs and strengths of individuals
  3. Systematic individual and collective reflective practice underpinned by organisational expectations and appropriate contracts of employment.
  4. Mentoring projects. These included the example in one project of 6 emerging musicians being recruited for a work placement project with individual and group support over a period of 4-6 months
  5. Project-related training e.g. a project team from different disciplines preparing for and planning the work together as a team (with occasional theoretical input e.g. attachment) and building the team as they go.
  6. Peer-to-peer networks
  7. Some focused off-the-job training.
  8. Effective supervision-based dialogue about a worker’s learning, training and development needs.
  9. MINC musicians being encouraged to lead or co-lead sessions. Preparing focuses the mind.
  10. ArtWorks suggests that in a geographical area, some of the above activity might be carried out with people from a mix of creative discipline. Thoughts?
  11. Trinity Guildhall has developed a Certificate in Music Education.

Might you set yourselves up as a Centre? ‘We like it as a worthwhile process for practitioners to consider their own skills and learning against a wider framework – but not as a ‘test’’

Positives might include: many participants react positively to a structure and a qualification. Many participants react well to work centred around clearly-focused and relevant assignments.

Unknowns: it is pitched at Level 4 (first year undergraduate). While this may be ‘low’ for some, it might offer flexibility. Is the content (see weblink) easily adaptable to MINC work?

Gail Dudson

Rob Hunter

Based on the structure and findings from participants in the Birmingham Gathering November 2013

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