The Sage Gateshead's Creative Transitions programme has succeeded in engaging hard-to-reach students, helping them connect with the wider school community, according to programme director Steve Jinsky.
As the Music Manifesto Pathfinder programme comes to an end, we're looking at some of the project's findings and the experiences of those involved. Led by directors Steve Jinsky and Bex Mather (pictured), Creative Transitions has been running in Newcastle, Darlington and Redcar, working with students in year 6 and year 7, across the transition from primary to secondary school.
One of the aims was to re-engage students who felt they had 'grown out of' music, or thought music-making had become 'uncool' as they approached secondary school. So the projects began with music mapping activities, asking young people about the kind of music they liked, what it meant to them and how it fitted into their lives at home, at school or out of school.
The surveys discovered that while many young people were already involved in music, others were not at all, and often that same group were not only disengaged with music, but disengaged with their school work and school community in general.
"So we were looking at ways to use music as a tool to bring them back in," says Steve. They set up samba and percussion workshops, singing and songwriting, rapping, DJing and music technology activities, and as the project progressed there were a number of success stories.
"At Moorside School in the west end of Newcastle, there was one particular boy who never spoke in school at all apparently, hardly ever said a word," says Steve. "His attendance was very poor as well. But he got involved in the music-making that were we doing and in particular the DJing and rapping. Out of that came a recording of them doing their raps and their rhymes and at the end of the term they were given a CD of the work they'd done. At the beginning of the next term he went and knocked on the headmistress's door and said, I've got my CD from last year, can we play it in assembly? The headmistress was absolutely astonished."
The transformation of that one student shows how involvement in musical activity can lead to huge boosts in confidence. The use of rapping, rhyming and songwriting has proved particularly successful, tying in with literacy topics and giving young people an opportunity to express their ideas and opinions. It also chimes with fans of pop and rap, who identify more closely with the style of music.
Another good example of this took place at Simonside Primary School in Newcastle where one music teacher had noticed that during singing assemblies the older boys often messed around. By chance one day she took in a backing track with an r'n'b groove and the response was suddenly much more enthusiastic.
That teacher asked Creative Transitions to run a project with the year 6 boys, writing a piece of music with a similar backing track that was a positive acclamation of the school, which they could then teach to the whole school in assembly. "So they wrote a song - it had this cool rhythm - with a bit of a singalong chorus and a rap and they took it to assembly," explains Steve.
The result? Those young men who used to spend their assemblies messing around were now out at the front, motivating everybody else to sing. That's quite a turnaround.