Community Workshop

Introduction

Music is a huge part of the majority of people’s lives, wether they take part through listening, performing or producing it can have a huge effect on your mental health and how you interact with others.

Researching Community Workshops

Streetwise Opera

Streetwise Opera is a performing arts charity that helps people who are or have been homeless to gain creative skills as well as regain confidence and social skills in order to help them in the future. Opera is an interesting choice as it is regarded as being a very prestigious form of musical theatre and is very hard to perform. However after watching this video it is very interesting to see the affects that performing opera has had on the people involved in this project. Music, especially singing is one of the best ways to express yourself and your ideas, when singing in groups or as a soloist, you often feel very powerful and gain lots of confidence as well as further understanding into other forms of expressing yourself.  Everyone has an individual story to tell and many of the people involved in streetwise opera have been on the end of harsh times as they have or had been rendered homeless. Homelessness is a huge problem in the UK and across the world and one that needs to be addressed, however strangely you never seem to see homeless people being asked their opinion by news stations about what it is like to be homeless. Instead the press and Government generally making sweeping statements about homelessness and focus on statistics instead of peoples quality of life and mental state. Lots of people are currently living in hostels or temporary housing with the constant fear of having that final safety net removed. It doesn’t help that rents are increasing and a lot of peoples pay has failed to significantly rise over the past decade, therefore making it harder to purchase or rent accommodation. The overall point I was making is that we have no idea about the situations that people are currently in or the chain of events that has led people to the point of being homeless and that Streetwise Opera is a brilliant organisation as it allows people to tell their stories and for those stories to be heard.

Music in Prisons

Prisons are often at the centre of some very interesting debates and conversations. The idea of prisons for me is mixed as some crimes destroy people’s lives and therefore the criminal should surely face some sort of reparations whereas other crimes are controversial as some see the laws around them as unjust, personally I don’t think that prisons are set up in the best way to help society either. The structure of prisons is also controversial and depends on the way you view morals as to your opinion, Some people believe that prisons should stand as a statement and should be tough so as to make a person fear prison and therefore not commit crimes, this compares to people who believe that everyone can make mistakes and crimes can be situational therefore prisons should be set up as rehabilitation centres so that prisoners can re enter society. I definitely lean more towards the idea of rehabilitation as I believe that hard prison measures often make situations worse whereas through rehabilitation someone might find a love or passion and understand why what they did to get there was wrong allowing them to change path. Music can be instrumental in empowering and inspiring people as I have talked about in streetwise opera and has proven to bring great results when used in this process.

https://mic.com/articles/186508/how-jazz-and-classical-music-are-benefitting-incarcerated-people-in-california#.ZPjs9t8E3

Here is  very interesting article on the use of music in prisons in California USA. The article advocates a number of viewpoints including inmates, prison staff and performers. The use of music in the prison process is overwhelmingly positive and benefited all 3 of those groups as well as lowering the repeat crime level. One study showed that participants in this project had 75% disciplinary actions while incarcerated. Moreover, those who took part in the program were up to 27% less likely to re offend after they were released from prison which speaks volumes.

Music and Dementia

This video is absolutely incredible in that the music has transformed a man who was unable to speak and was very antisocial into a very vibrant person. This is a brilliant example of how music is a huge part of our quality of life and how much it can effect an individual. Through the introduction of a few tracks of music by the use of an ipod, this man started to regain old memories as well as a passion and love for life. This phenomenon comes among a lot of different discoveries and ideas around the use of triggers to help a person remember things about their lives and to illnesses such as dementia.

http://practicalneurology.com/2017/06/music-and-dementia-an-overview&center=37

Here is a really interesting article about the effects that different musical practices have on people suffering from dementia. To summarise slightly , it talks about how musical memory comes under a different section of the brain to that of memories about life and experiences. Music and other activities such as dancing and exercise come under the name Procedural memory whereas for memories of life are known as explicit memories. Explicit memory gradually disappears as dementia worsens however Procedural memory is more likely to stay intact as it is often based off of memories and actions ingrained in their youth and continued throughout their life. Therefore by visiting these triggers of procedural memory, you can recognise and discover explicit memories. We can all see examples of this within our own lives as through being involved in sporting or musical activities we can often remember excerpts or stories from our lives. It will be interesting to see where these developments go in the future and how we as a society as well as community projects can utilise this technology in order to improve peoples quality of life and lessen their suffering.

Music in Primary Schools

Music is a hugely important part of our society as it tells the stories of many cultures as bringing people together and having brilliant effects on peoples mental health. Talking from the point of view of myself going through the primary school system 7 years ago, in my experience the music and creative curriculum of primary schools was very limited and only through my own self fortune of being able to have piano lessons did I find my love for music. Although music is such a huge part of our society and economy it is often viewed as a soft subject to take and academic subjects are heavily promoted above it. People are often told that you can’t make a living out of music and that you should play it safe and take subjects such as history or sciences. While there’s nothing wrong with academic subjects, you can make a living from music and the creative arts have a very academic side within them if that is a path you wish to pursue. As music is so involved in society by studying it I have developed understandings of different ideas and subjects including psychology, history and philosophy which I don’t believe I would have received had I have taken those subjects at a higher level. I therefore strongly believe that creative subjects and music should be easily accessible for people at all levels, especially at primary school level.

20 Important Benefits of Music In Our Schools

Above is a very interesting list of points as to the benefits of a child learning music. As you can see many of these skills are easily transferable across the job industry of today’s market. Personally I feel that a lot of people are apposed to this as they are scared that the music industry would become way too competitive, however I feel that the current music industry is quite elitist and by hugely increasing the demand and availability of music at all levels, there would be way more opportunity to pursue a full time music career. I think that a lot of people grow up without a good idea of expressing their political and creative views which is a huge shame and leads to some unpleasant ideas circulating through our society. By offering the opportunity for everyone to play a musical instrument or take part in musical projects, I believe that we would benefit hugely as a society.

Warm-up Exercises

During our introduction session into this topic, we learnt how warm-up games and exercises can be utilised to help create trust within groups of people. It can be very intimidating when meeting and working with people for the first time, therefore we needed to understand the best ways that we could gel the group together within the short time that we were given.

Mind the gap

Here is the plan we drew up as a group.

When creating our workshop, we wanted to create a main theme and develop it using different ideas and warm up exercises. Our plan was that the workshop would be enjoyable as well as informative and would hopefully improve the participants skills or introduce them to new ones.

Basic Plan (Chronological):

• Getting to know each other round the circle (2 – 5 Minutes)
  • Names
  • Hobbies
  • Favourite bands & musicians, etc
• Rhyme round the circle (10 – 15 minutes)
  • Show an example
  • Start with a word and rhyme around the circle, if you can’t rhyme it then you’re out
  • Move around 1 by 1, choosing a different word that rhymes with the previous one
• Rhythm memory (10 – 15 minutes)
  • Show an example
  • Link a simple rhythm to a number (x3 +)
  • Call out number and if rhythm is wrong, they are out for that round
• Songwriting workshop (20 – 30 minutes)
  • Set up groups (try to even out the mental difficulties)
  • Give each group a different section of a theme / story to write about and a beat
    • Eg. Going to a theme park
      • Journey there
      • At the theme park
      • Activities
      • Going home
• Perform together and record with microphone to edit and send to Mind The Gap (10 minutes)

Backup Exercises:

• Leave the room game – Warm down (10 minutes)

• • Sit in a circle facing one another
  • One person leaves the room, they are the detective
  • One person in the circle is the leader
  • The leader is able to change the rhythm and needs to begin with a rhythm
  • The detective needs to try and guess who is the leader
  • We will do an example round

Conducting exercise

• Sit in a circle,
• When the conductor points at you begin to play a rhythm
• Conductor can control noise level and point at you again to change the rhythm
• We will do an example

Problem Solving:

• Get comfortable with the group by being casual, social, non intimidating, and getting to know them all, starting by introducing ourselves and the workshop.
• Do clear examples of activities to make sure that everyone knows what they’re doing.
• Socialising is difficult so we will try to keep them in groups as much as possible so they don’t feel like the focus is on them
• Establish easy ways of communicating, eg letting them know their helpers can talk for them or they get can our attention by raising their hands or getting their helpers to get our attention if they struggle with motor function (Cerebral Palsy)
• Let them know that they don’t need to do everything, they can sit back if they want to.
• Some of the group may repeat what we say so we will need to allow them time and space to reply (Echolalia)
• Focus on acting professional, be respectful to everyone and try to include everyone.
• Sometimes I can mumble slightly when talking, so I will work at articulating myself in a much better way.

Evaluation of the plan

Personally I felt that we came up with a very well structured action plan for the Mind the Gap workshop, we did well to develop a main theme idea and add unique elements to it. One of the unique elements that I was very proud of was creating a main activity that would exhibit key skills, encourage teamwork and be very engaging at the same time. The unique parts of our workshop included telling a story through rapping as well as filming the final performance which is a very nice memento to take away from it.

I thought that we created a well balanced workshop with introduction games encouraging teamwork, as well as creating a more friendly and casual environment. Personal I believe that people work much better in a casual environment compared to a formal one as they general feel more confident and comfortable in expressing their opinions, generally there aren’t many places where you are able to express yourself fully in society, therefore being able to create an environment such as this will hopefully benefit the group as a whole and boost everyone’s confidence.

Session One

Unfortunately our planned session with mind the gap didn’t materialise, therefore we instead ran a practice session with the other students on our course. Overall this was a very useful session as it allowed us to make sure that our running times were okay as well as to receive some feedback which would hopefully allow us to improve our workshop where possible. We had 45 minutes overall which is slightly short of the hour that we would be requested to do in order to go out and do it with other people.

Overall our first session was a huge success. By creating a detailed plan beforehand we felt much more comfortable as a group to deliver a well structured workshop. Although we were familiar with our classmates who were partaking in this session, I thought that it would be good to approach them as if we hadn’t met them before in order to create a more authentic rehearsal. Therefore we began with the name game and asked everyone to introduce themselves as well as name their favourite musical artists/bands. Although it felt strange at first to do this to a group we new very well, I think that it formalised the workshop a bit more in that everyone was focused on the tasks ahead of them. Body language was something that came up in the feedback and it was something I became more aware of as the session went on. Although I always tried to present myself in a confident and engaging manor, I discovered that I found ways to improve this as the session went on. A particular part of this was being conscious of people’s height when talking to them. I am quite a tall person at 6ft 1 and this can sometimes be an intimidating factor, especially if they are a stranger. Therefore I did my best to talk to people on a level height and to relax a bit more in order to look less scary.

When presenting our main workshop I don’t think that we provided strong enough examples as people seemed confused about what sort of theme we could potentially do, I therefore believe that we’ll need to plan this out more carefully in the future and potentially give people the topics to rap about instead of leaving it up to them as it might waste quite a lot of time.

A great part of our workshop in my eyes, was Jensen’s suggestion for us to move round with different groups. This really opened up the session and allowed us to all focus on our strengths, as Jensen was helping with working with a backing track, Ant was working on the writing side and I was working on presentation skills. By taking this approach the groups received much more balanced advice and worked much better.

We didn’t have time to run our cool down activity in this session, however it is an area we will need to look at for our final workshop and how it impacts the flow and content of the workshop overall.

Ravenscliffe Community Centre

Developing our Workshop Plan

The main things we wanted change from the mock workshop with our classmates:

 

• Adding suggestions for topics, locations, etc.
• Instead of creating a story with the group, we will give a topic for the groups to rap about.
• When taking on a new topic, we will make sure that we change the section of the song for each group, ensuring that everyone in the group gets experience in either writing a verse or a chorus.

Final Plan:

Introduce ourselves, using a digital presentation, or if we have no screen or projector, we will talk about ourselves. (5-7.5)

1. Start with warm ups (15)
   1. Rhyme Around the Circle
   2. Rhythm Memory
2. Songwriting Workshop (split the 30 minute slot by how many groups there are)
3. End with cool down (10)
   1. Battling
      1. Freestyle
      2. Lip-Sync

Backup exercises-

• Conducting Exercise
• Blackjack (up to 20/50)

Reflection

After group consideration we decided that we’d approach our main workshop (the songwriting one) depending on how many people were there on the day and based on what the people there wanted to do. This was also the approach we took when choosing our warm down activities as the group might feel more confident with one than another.

When running a group workshop there will be anxiety on both the organisers and the participants sides. In our practice workshop I think that we communicated really well, however I think that if we know the structure of our plan better then we will be a bit more confident in our final workshop.

Final Workshop

Unfortunately the paper work for the Ravens cliffe session fell through meaning that we faced doing our final workshop in college with level 2 and performing arts students. This threw us off slightly as we had planned our workshop towards a group of people that we had never met before, whereas with the group we finally worked with, I knew a few of the people quite well. Despite this, I think that we delivered a well structured and fun workshop and everyone taking part said that they enjoyed and had learnt something new from the session. The added challenge was that for example with the getting to know you game we already knew most of the people, therefore it would have been interesting to see how that would have gone down with an entirely new group.

As there was no real set time to when we began our final workshop, this meant that the introduction was slightly messy. However I think that we did well to manage this situation and move on to our first game which began to interest the group and get them warmed up. By the time we had moved onto the second game the majority of the group relaxed and began to engage much more with one another as well as the tasks we had set them. There were a couple of shy people who were talking less than the others, therefore I did my best to encourage those people to join in and they reacted very positively. In order to encourage one of the members of the group I put them in charge of making the rules for the rhythm memory game which they seemed to enjoy and they became much more involved after that.

Moving on to the main part of the workshop, we decided due to having quite a small group (six people) that we would split them into 2 teams instead of 3. I think that this was the perfect approach to take as we were trying to create a competitive game whilst also trying to include everyone and involving everyone as much as possible. I think that had we split into 3 groups of 2, people might have felt less confident in their skills as a group, as it would have been more pressure on their shoulders.  We asked for each group to come up with a team name and allocated one group to use the white board in the room whereas the other group to use pens and paper. I think that we could have been more prepared for this situation as personally I felt that the group using the white board worked better, as it was easier for them all to write down their ideas. We then played both teams the backing beat that they would be rapping to, before splitting off into the groups to write the raps. Originally in our plan we decided that we would each work with one group and switch around every now and then so as to input our different ideas and areas of expertise, however due to the fact that we were working with two groups we decided to change this approach. Ant took group one and Jensen took group two for the session whilst I acted as a moderator and worked with both groups. The job that I took on was encouraging people to work as a team and to put there ideas forward to the group. I also came up with a score system that was based on 3 categories, presentation skills, creative skills and inclusion skills. We wanted everyone to get an opportunity at both writing and performing, therefore we strongly encouraged teamwork. I also came up with a few bonus point ideas including one point for every desert used in the rap, 5 points for the inclusion of the word yeet and a further 5 points for using the word yeet in a rhyme. These bonus points really seemed to galvanize the enthusiasm of the groups as well as encourage them to stray away from playing safe and really push their creativity. I also did my best to push both groups to come up with a good way of presenting their ideas. By bringing a fun and silly approach to this idea, I think that I made people feel more relaxed and confident overall.

We gave each group allocated practice time with the backing track in order to make them feel more confident. A good rap often consists of using the rhythms really well therefore we showed each group how to take advantage of pauses and rests to add effect as well as how to count the timing and when to come in.

Both performances were excellent and both sets of performers were very confident and presented themselves with flair. The quality of each rap was brilliant and everyone was involved in both the writing and performing process. When adding up the scores, I decided it might be fun to call it a draw and to settle the competition with a freestyle rap battle. In order to do this I asked each team to select a representative to rap for them. We put the final decision in Ant’s hands as he has the most experience in rapping and he was the participants choice. Both teams rose to the challenge and produced great raps, one of the people put forward originally didn’t want to do it. However with the encouragement of ourselves and both groups, she took it in her stride and provided the winning rap for her team.

We still had five minutes left and therefore concluded that we should finish with a cool down. Ant decided that he would like to run this activity and told everyone to sit in a circle and shut their eyes. After a couple of minutes, it was evident that he didn’t have an idea of what we should do as a game. Therefore I decided to take the initiative and run one of our backup cool downs being the counting game to 21. This was slightly disappointing as although people were engaged with this game, it wasn’t the ideal cool down and we had planned out better ways to finish the workshop.

In a summary of this workshop, when asked everyone had had a great time and had learnt new skills in rapping and song writing. As mentioned there were ways in which we could have improved our approach however, I felt that we did very well to adapt to the change environment in the short time we were given. I thought that we worked well as a team and successfully encouraged the group to challenge themselves.

A confusing part of this workshop for myself was how I should act when talking to the participants. As I knew a lot of them by name, I took quite a casual and friendly approach and therefore may have come across as slightly passive when a stronger approach could have been better at times. I would have been intrigued to see how I would have coped with a group of entirely new people and what sort of role I would have taken on.

Overall I’m glad I got the opportunity to  experience a workshop and I feel that my communication and team work skills have vastly improved.