Just The Tonic, Series 1, Episode 6: Inspirational Music Educators

Introduction (0:00)

[Applause]

0:03 Katie: The enormous benefits of giving children a good music education are well recognised. Being involved in making music can have a lasting impact. It’s not only great fun, but children can learn valuable life skills too. Those of you who’ve learned to play an instrument will no doubt have heard the old saying “practice makes perfect” many a time. If you want to be good at something, you have to put the hours in. And then playing or singing in a group can help children learn social skills through teamwork. A study from the University of California showed that learning music helps children to understand maths, and it can boost self-confidence and help their concentration too. I’m Katie Derham, and in this episode we’ll be exploring how music education for children can be just the tonic.

1:01 There’s long been a correlation between musical training and academic success, and that’s something that Jo Ashcroft recognises.

1:09 Jo Ashcroft: We find that the young people who commit and keep coming to us really grow in confidence. We find that they commit more to school; they commit generally to their education.

1:18 Katie: Jo is a senior musician at Sistema Scotland‘s Big Noise Raploch project. Sistema Scotland is inspired by the world-famous El Sistema, the music education project in Venezuela which has helped and trained tens of thousands of children. The fantastic music you’ve just been listening to has all been performed by children and young people from Big Noise Raploch. We’ll be hearing more from Jo later, and from students Symone and Scott Hutchinson…

1:50 “Learning a musical instrument isn’t just about the musical side of things – you learn many life skills.”

1:58 “If it wasn’t for Big Noise, I don’t know what I would be doing. Big Noise has changed my life, and I’m sure it has for many other children here.”

2:08 Katie: …and I’ll be speaking to the brilliant virtuoso violinist Nicola Benedetti, who’s helping thousands of children around the world get involved in music through her Benedetti Foundation.

2:20 Nicola Benedetti: Music within education is a life choice and a life mission for me, and for so many of my colleagues.

The TPO conductor (2:31)

2:31 Katie: First up, let’s hear from a conductor with The People’s Orchestra, the fabulous West Midlands-based community orchestra we’ve featured throughout this series. […] In their experience, studying music at school gives children an added advantage in other subjects.

2:56 TPO conductor: I was lucky enough to go to one of the top state schools […] – and not because I was rich and able to fund it. It was all funded by [the government], and it was partly a music school – what they call a centre for excellence. It’s totally free to attend; it’s just by audition. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the top state schools […] has a specialist music programme. The music students there were often among the highest-performing students in the school.

3:21 Katie: Schools that invest in their music programmes get better results – that is a fact that is consistent throughout pages and pages of research. And as our conductor says, the benefits aren’t just for those who want to take up music as a career.

3:31 TPO conductor: It can be a hobby. It can be something that you do because you enjoy it. Most people who think they can’t learn an instrument, or have been told they can’t, have just been either taught in the wrong way or taught the wrong thing. There is an instrument for everyone. I used to play [one instrument] – I never really liked it; that just wasn’t for me. I went on to play [another]. I absolutely loved that; that was for me. But if people give up because they didn’t enjoy their first instrument, then they’re missing out on a whole world that they can take with them for the rest of their lives, and all the benefits that come with that.

4:05 There’s hundreds of instruments and there’s hundreds of styles, and obviously it can be difficult, especially in a classroom, to cover all that. But if you don’t like what you’re being taught in the classroom, there are definitely more styles out there to discover, and definitely more instruments. For example, we’re very much taught about Western classical music. For a lot of people that’s really, really boring. They might be into jazz, or hip-hop, or much more modern music. That’s totally fine. Go and find your passion, because there will be a style for you.

4:23 Katie: We heard in episode three how saxophonist Xhosa Cole benefited from community music programmes when he was growing up in Birmingham. That was at a time when arts funding was more widely available. Making music lessons available to everyone is something our conductor feels very strongly about.

4:37 TPO conductor: Charging for tuition lessons is very classist. It just strengthens this idea that music is for rich children whose parents can afford it. That’s not what it should be. And it is a shame – it’s one of the only subjects, apart from sports, that young people will engage in outside of school hours, and yet you want to charge them for the privilege? They want to go and learn something, but you’re asking them to cough up some money first. That’s totally not on.

[Music] [Applause]

Big Noise Raploch (5:21)

5:21 Katie: One music education project that provides lessons free of charge is Sistema Scotland. Their musicians have been teaching children in deprived communities all over Scotland to learn to play a musical instrument, through their Big Noise projects. Here’s Jo Ashcroft, senior musician from Big Noise Raploch in Stirling.

5:40 Jo: The first Big Noise centre of Sistema Scotland was inspired by the Venezuelan Sistema, which is quite a historical thing now, set up by José Antonio Abreu. It was about bringing immersive, free orchestral instrumental tuition, and the idea of teaching in big groups and making a big sound – an orchestral sound – to glue communities together and try and promote community cohesion in some of the poorest areas of Venezuela, in cities such as Caracas.

6:10 Katie: It was during a trip to Venezuela that Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, saw the El Sistema project and decided it would be great to bring something similar to communities in Scotland.

6:20 Jo: A journey started, finding a community that was interested and that fitted the bill for the first Big Noise centre, and they decided on Raploch, as it was undergoing a lot of regeneration in terms of funding and in terms of the housing here. Since Big Noise started 13 years ago, there’s been a huge amount of physical regeneration in Raploch – lots and lots of housing knocked down, lots and lots of housing rebuilt, and a new community campus, which was pretty much brand new when Big Noise started. So the idea of regenerating a community, giving people something new, was there when Big Noise started as well.

6:58 Since then, Big Noise projects have been set up in Govanhill in Glasgow, Torry in Aberdeen, Douglas in Dundee and Wester Hailes in Edinburgh. The reason why we work in communities such as Raploch, Govanhill, Torry, Douglas and Wester Hailes is because all those communities face significant challenges in terms of multiple deprivation. They’re very different communities to each other, but all of them have significant challenges for the people that live there. So the reality of buying musical instruments and paying for lessons is not something families can often afford.

7:42 The children that we work with wouldn’t have the opportunity to play an instrument – they wouldn’t have the opportunity to play music – because of financial barriers. It’s only this year that the Scottish Government has reduced the financial burden of playing an instrument in schools. But the resources that local authority music services have are still limited, and it doesn’t mean that it’s open to everyone just because it’s free. Lots of local authority music services still have a kind of aptitude test, so if kids haven’t had a background in music up to the point where they have to take that test, they probably aren’t going to pass it. We find that for the kids that we work with, if it wasn’t for Big Noise, that cycle wouldn’t be broken; they wouldn’t have the opportunity. Whereas we find that the kids that play music with us are just as able as other children – they just wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with musicians if it wasn’t for Big Noise being in their community.

[Music]

8:40 Katie: For Jo, the wider benefits of a music education are clear to see in the children she’s worked with.

8:46 Jo: Well, our motto is “social change through music” – social transformation, social change through music. And we find that the young people who commit and keep coming to us really grow in confidence. We find that they commit more to school when they’re committing to us as well, and they commit generally to their education.

9:09 A lot of us as staff members – as musicians in Big Noise – are quite long-term staff members in the community. I’ve worked here pretty much for 11 years. I’ve seen some children who were four who are now 15, or even older than that. So I think the idea of building relationships is as much part of our ethos as teaching music. Music is a tool, but it’s also relationships, and finding the common ground between musician and children – being a kind of role model, talking about healthy relationships and a way of living – that really helps with kids opening their eyes to what’s achievable in life.

[Music]

10:07 Katie: And they start at the very beginning – which, as we all know, is a very fine place to start.

10:13 Jo: Before they come to after-school, we teach them in the school, in Primary 1 and 2, talking about the basics – the building blocks of music in terms of pitch, timbre, metre, rhythm – and also the building blocks of being a musician in terms of the social skills: sharing, taking turns, the social outcomes. Even before that, we teach in nursery, and in Little Noise, which is the parent and toddler group. So we’re trying to give every child in Raploch, or in the communities that we work in, that – all the way through their childhood, up until they’re 18, if they choose to continue that far.

[Music]

10:58 So that’s how the progression works. They come to after-school up to four days a week. The beginners come twice a week, and then they come more often – three times, and then four times a week if they’re more advanced. So some of them come every night after school, and that’s when they generally have their group sessions. We try to do their one-to-one individual lessons during the school day, and then there’s their specific symphonic band, or WBP – woodwind, brass and percussion band – or string orchestra, and then the symphony orchestra incorporates everyone.

11:29 Katie: And this fantastic, comprehensive music education is free to the children taking part.

11:35 Jo: Everything’s provided free of charge. The children come and they’re provided with a healthy snack. The instruments are provided free of charge, music is provided free of charge – everything’s free. All the trips are free. We don’t ask them to contribute to anything.

[Music]

Symone and Scott Hutchinson (11:56)

11:56 Katie: One young person who’s been with Big Noise in Raploch since primary school, and is now studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, is Symone Hutchinson.

[Music]

12:10 Symone Hutchinson: My friends from primary school already went to Big Noise, with the string programme, and I was never really interested in the strings. But in my Primary 6/7 class, the brass tutors came in, and they were all walking about playing their instruments. I remember as a child just being totally mesmerised, and thinking that was so amazing – these big brass instruments I’d never seen in my life.

[Music]

12:38 I got given the trombone – I think it’s because I had quite long arms and stuff – and I’m really, really glad, because I just love trombone. None of my family are musical at all, and none of them played instruments. So when I brought this big brass instrument home and would play out in the back garden – as you can imagine, as a beginner it didn’t sound great at all – my dad would be walking around slamming doors, while my mum was acting as if it sounded great!

13:07 When I got to high school I realised that I really wanted to do trombone as a career, so I auditioned for orchestras like the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and went to their junior orchestra for a few years. And then I also auditioned for the Junior Academy at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, so I went to the juniors programme for many years, and then auditioned and got into uni at the Royal Conservatoire. So I’m currently going into my third year now, studying the BMus Performance.

13:47 Learning a musical instrument isn’t just about the musical side of things – you learn many life skills. A huge thing for me in learning an instrument was my confidence. I used to be really shy and insecure, but learning an instrument has just brought me out of my shell. I’ve spoken and played in front of many people, by myself and with groups, and I would never have been able to do that before. And small things like organisation – because in high school I had to study for exams and go to Big Noise and practise, I had to be really organised with my time. So it’s endless, the number of life skills that come along with learning an instrument.

14:18 When I finish my studies, I want to do community outreach. I feel really passionately about it. I want to give back, in a way, because I was given such amazing opportunities, and I would never be where I am without Big Noise. So I want to be able to give that to at least one child, if not more.

14:51 My family, I think, are all very proud of me. My aunties love coming to my concerts, and they’re always asking when the next one is. I have two brothers who are also in Big Noise. I have one that plays trombone, and my younger brother plays clarinet. At Christmas time we actually get together and do trios and duets and stuff, and send all the videos to the family.

15:10 Katie: And here’s Symone’s brother, 16-year-old Scott, who plays clarinet and saxophone.

15:14 Scott Hutchinson: Well, obviously I love performing music, but also just meeting new people. Through Big Noise I’ve been on various courses, and just meeting people with the same interest is amazing. I’ve been attending the Royal Conservatoire junior programme for about four years now. Music has definitely increased my confidence, as well as my leadership skills. If it wasn’t for Big Noise, I don’t know what I would be doing. Big Noise has – well, it’s changed my life, and I’m sure it has for many other children here. Big Noise has opened a clear career path of what I want to do. I would love to do something in music – either performing, or maybe even come back to Big Noise and do some teaching. That would be the dream.

15:55 Katie: It is so great to hear that both Symone and Scott are thinking about music education as a career, to give children in their own community the opportunities that Big Noise has given to them.

Nicola Benedetti (16:10)

16:10 Katie: But one musician whose name has become synonymous with music education is one of the finest and most in-demand violinists around: Nicola Benedetti. That’s Nicola playing with children in the Big Noise Raploch project a few years ago. Recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award just this year, Nicola is a firm believer that music is integral to a great education. Through her Benedetti Foundation she has taught and inspired countless young musicians, and provided a lifeline for thousands worldwide as they continued to play throughout the pandemic with her virtual Benedetti Sessions.

16:50 I’ve had the pleasure of working with and interviewing Nicola many times over her illustrious career – even though she’s still very, very young, she’s been going for many, many years – and I have to say, it is hard to think of another musician who has invested so much energy, enthusiasm and care into music education. I was delighted she could spare some of her very precious time to chat to me over Zoom. She had just held a masterclass with her young musicians, and she was about to head off to play with the LA Philharmonic. Before she set up the Benedetti Foundation, Nicola was involved with Sistema Scotland as a musical big sister, and I asked her what it was about the programme that she felt was so important to support.

17:33 Nicola: I contacted them right at the beginning to say I wanted to be involved, and see what they were doing, and try to help out. Their organisational development over that time has been exemplary, and inspiring, I think, to organisations all over the world – how they have negotiated governmental support, and a telling of their own story that says “this is why we are relevant” to anyone that comes across and encounters and interfaces with what they offer. I think they’ve done that really, really successfully, and they have no trouble communicating the importance of what they do.

18:10 Also, the teachers, the tutors, the musicians that they have working with them are some of the strongest music educators that I know in the world, and we invite them regularly to teach and present and lead workshops at the Benedetti Foundation. So I would say it’s that extended family, and real sense of community and mutual respect, that breaks down the barriers – that doesn’t silo teachers here, professional performers here, amateur performers here, educators here. We’re all part of a continuum that’s natural.

18:42 Katie: How do you reckon it’s helping the kids who come along to those classes? A lot of them have never had any access to classical music before, and may never have picked up an instrument before. What I’ve always been fascinated by is the real hard facts of how it really helps them with their schoolwork as well – which, at a very basic, prosaic level, is something I can’t believe educators more generally don’t pick up on.

19:09 Nicola: Yes. Well, I think although the statistics are clear, there are a number of things that do fall into that category of being helpful for the rest of education. There are ancient practices – but more contemporary in terms of our Western ways – from meditation to other sensory experiences with the body: with touch, with breathing, with focus. All of these things can also fall into that category. People say similar things about basic physical exercise, and being able to move around in sports. However, there is a deeply emotive and spiritual component to music itself that is about expression. So I would always put music and the arts in a category of its own, which I think does impact the rest of how you are able to function and concentrate.

20:11 The other thing that I think is important to say is that we all know in our immediate lives how hard it is to focus – to be productive, successful, calm, concentrated – if something from an emotional standpoint is off, or a psychological standpoint is off. And with the thousands of children that I’ve been in front of, you can so often tell: I am just one little problem away from what I’m trying to teach you being absorbed by you. And quite often what’s in between is nothing to do with ability, or capacity to learn, or intelligence or anything like that – it’s some sort of a block. And therefore that freeing up of the mind and the body, which of course work intrinsically together, is something that music can be chief amongst all in terms of addressing.

21:05 And also, just to speak directly to your point about improving in other areas of your education: when it comes to instrumental learning – the discipline required to learn music, learning to read notes, or for that matter understanding how a rhythm fits together, how two notes can fit together in harmony – all of those things… It always fascinates me so much that when I was young, the idea of me going into music was always considered… my head teachers were saying, “why would she waste the aptitude she has for school on music? She’s wasting her brain on that.” And of everything that I learned in school, nothing compared to the difficulty of learning the violin, or the difficulty of trying to understand a concerto. Nothing came close to that. And so I do think that there are so many skills – along the lines of discipline, the mathematical brain, the problem-solving brain – that the complexity of music exercises, and pushes up a level.

22:29 Katie: So what are you trying to achieve, then, with all the hundreds and hundreds of children that you’ve had access to through the Benedetti Foundation? It’s gobsmacking how many people have taken your online courses over these last two years. Your timing was kind of terrible and perfect, wasn’t it – launching in January 2020?

22:50 Nicola: Precisely that, yes. And we’re at the point now where we’re analysing how all of that has affected our trajectory, as has been the case with all organisations. But we were lucky to have four in-person, large-scale workshops before lockdown happened, and then of course pivoted everything online. We actually did a summary of our numbers recently, and we’ve directly taught something like 25,000 people from around the world – from over 90 countries, I think; it’s a high number – and a really big age range as well. Because we do things that are very general musicianship – understanding how to keep a basic pulse, with a little bit of polyphony in there, or basic movement and dance study that is nuanced and reactive to music, but is something that anybody can participate in. So we have really, really young kids who can take part in that, but also a large adult learner base.

24:02 I think we are trying to achieve a lot of different things at once, and that can be really tricky and confusing sometimes. We are in a process of continuously refining what our values are, and our mission – which is also completely natural after the big bang of starting something. But I would say that at the core of all of our activity is to seek out the very best examples of what music education, or music in education, looks and feels like, shine a bright light on those best practices and best examples, and trumpet them out to the world. And on top of that, to be thinking ourselves continuously: what are we not seeing? What do we need to revolutionise? In which areas can we really trailblaze and set a new standard that is absolutely cognisant of, and respectful to, our long and rich tradition, but that is constantly looking at today and thinking: where is our contemporary voice? Those two things underpin everything that we try to do.

25:23 Katie: And what do you think the trailblazing next step is going to be for you? Are there any particular areas that you really want to crack on with?

25:33 Nicola: Our actual activity falls into certain pillars. One, of course, is the live sessions themselves. So it’s a case of continually refining what that workshop feels like. It has to be something that is full of high energy and excitement – ideally something that then lasts inside that person for a long time, something that has that explosive power – but also something that constantly addresses: what is the ground that we stand on when we’re talking about music and music education? What are those foundational things that we all agree, if you don’t understand them, you’re not getting a good music education? So with the live activity, we are in a process of refining and upping the level of that.

26:24 Then there’s our ambassador programme, which is for college-age students, really. That is about the pipeline of great musicians who must also value the role of the teacher, and step into that role as well as carrying out their performing careers – but also tapping into that young generation that simply sees things in ways that we don’t, looking at things from their perspective, trying to unlock all of their creativity, and then trying to put into practice: what are their ideas that we can give life to?

26:58 Then of course there’s general advocacy, which we do on a continual basis. A lot of that takes place behind the scenes. You think of advocacy as getting in the paper and talking about stuff publicly all the time – that’s a part of it – but there’s a huge amount of local and national advocacy that is just conversations: convincing people of things, making sure we are repeating that important message over and over again in personal circumstances. And then the final one is online content: how are we raising the level of that experience, to make it as impactful as possible? What we present and provide online is there for anyone who has internet access to be able to click into, and we want to make sure that presentation is always of the highest possible quality.

27:46 Katie: You must feel incredibly proud of everything that you’ve achieved over the last couple of years with the Benedetti Foundation. 25,000 people accessing the material – that will have changed a lot of lives.

27:58 Nicola: I do feel proud of what we’ve achieved. But as with anybody trying to do anything, we’re continually picking it all apart and seeing what we can do next that has to be better.

28:12 Katie: If I can, just to finish off, go back in a way to where we started, with your advocacy: I just want to hear that elevator pitch, if you like – that 30-second “convince me”, as somebody who might not agree with you, why it’s so important that kids have access to music in their lives.

28:32 Nicola: Well, music is the art of the invisible things: our thoughts and feelings – the parts of us that actually are most powerful, and probably most important, but that you can’t necessarily quantify in a test result, and you can’t see. And if we can provide high-quality music education, it will help us be just better versions of ourselves, in a way that is painless and also enjoyable. If you look at interviews with people in the last years of their life, what do they talk about as being paramount to a successful or fulfilled life? Relationships are top of their list. So I think, in terms of elevating our view of society, elevating our ability to communicate with each other and have that empathy with each other, we need to be bringing something into school that works to address that – and of course, I would be saying music is that thing.

29:26 Katie: How important do you think it is for kids who otherwise have no access at all to any kind of art and culture, or who don’t come from musical families? How transformative are the lessons, the masterclasses, that you give to these kids?

29:42 Nicola: Well, I think we try to make everything – whether we’re talking about exactly how to hold a bow, or a violin, or how to sing a phrase – relevant to a life lesson. We’re never getting so detailed and small that we don’t understand that actually the vast majority of people we are teaching are not going to go on to do music as a profession, but it’s going to deeply impact their lives. So how are we taking all possible metaphorical examples within music, and addressing vital life lessons and life skills through that prism? I would say that, because we do focus on that, and we only work with tutors, teachers and musicians who share that belief, that naturally means the sessions are very impactful for people.

30:38 Katie: And it should be available to everybody, right? It shouldn’t be just somebody who’s got access to music lessons through a mum who’s played in an orchestra. It really has got to be out there, hasn’t it?

30:52 Nicola: Absolutely. Look, there is discrimination all over our society, and music within education is one of a million things that falls into that category – and it just happens to be, I would say, more marginalised, because it is a tricky thing to teach, and it’s difficult to make a high-quality version of it available for everyone. But continuing to fight the same fight over and over again, and hoping that even more development and enlightened thought comes our way – that’s a life choice and a life mission for me, and for so many of my colleagues.

31:38 Katie: And long may you continue to do so. Here’s Nicola leading a very happy group of children at a Benedetti Sessions concert.

[Music]

Close (31:50)

31:50 Katie: Huge thanks to Nicola Benedetti; to our conductor from The People’s Orchestra; to Jo Ashcroft from Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise project; and to Symone and Scott Hutchinson, whose lives have been transformed through the great work they do in Raploch and with communities all over Scotland.

32:10 We have heard a lot in this episode about how music helps build valuable relationships, and it’s something that’s at the heart of the Citizens of the World Choir. In the next episode we’ll be hearing from their choir leader, Becky Dell, and also from some of their singers – amongst them refugees who’ve been given a lifeline when they’ve arrived in the UK. I’ll also be chatting to acclaimed actor Emily Watson, who’s patron of the Citizens of the World Choir, about why she gives them her support. So do join us for a really inspirational and emotional edition of Just The Tonic.

[Music]

32:50 If you’re thinking about joining a choir or a community orchestra, or maybe looking for musicians to start a band, search online for community arts organisations in your area, or get in touch with Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland or Creative Scotland.

33:04 Just The Tonic with Katie Derham was produced by Jill Davis and is a Peanut and Crumb production, supported by The People’s Orchestra and Arts Council England.

[Music]