“Music can communicate to everyone if you give it a go!” So said one of the many participants in a trial programme that has led to Sounds of Intent, a recently launched new teaching framework which underlines how unlocking the musical potential of thousands of children with special needs can make a genuine difference to their development and later lives.
The Sounds of Intent framework is based on a decade’s worth of research led by Professor Adam Ockelford from the University of Roehampton, who worked alongside colleagues from the Institute of Education and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Its findings underlined how listening and contributing to music can be a “lifeline” to children with learning difficulties, enabling them “to express their feelings, communicate with others and understand something of the world around them”.
“Sounds of Intent does much more than provide information about how the musicality of children with learning difficulties develops,” Professor Ockelford explained at the launch of the new educational framework in late 2013. “Not only does it enable teachers, music specialists, therapists and parents to engage with music as an activity in its own right, it better equips them to use music as a scaffold to structure other learning and development.”
CONFIDENCE
Supporters of the project believe that Sounds of Intent will transform music education for those with special educational needs (SEN). Interestingly, almost at the same time, the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) launched a new guide designed specifically to encourage the inclusion of deaf children in musical activities.
“Involving deaf children in music and singing classes can help them feel more confident, learn a new skill and explore the world around them,” insisted Hayley Jarvis, Head of Inclusive Activities at NDCS. “Sadly, too many deaf children are denied the opportunity to experience music, leaving them feeling isolated and sad. By following simple steps, like using hand gestures or visual aids, music teachers and practitioners can open up the world of music to deaf children.”
Yet, until relatively recently, there was or no firm evidence about how children–especially those with learning difficulties–developed musically, meaning that there was little professional guidance or educational materials available to help children with autism, or those with profound or multiple learning difficulties. To combat this the Sounds of Intent project was established in 2001, consulting with more than 100 teachers and therapists from across the UK.
SOUNDS OF INTENT
The result is a developmental framework and assessment tool grounded in the reality of day-to-day school life, enabling users to work out children’s level of musical development, record and monitor their progress and also download musical activities for people of all ages and abilities. Nearly 350 educational practitioners from special needs schools are already accessing a whole range of resources from the Sounds of Intent website, using it to plan music curricula for their pupils.
Thanks to support from leading UK special needs music charity Soundabout, the intention is now to roll out the framework to some 400 special schools which don’t yet use it. Certainly, many of the 100 facilities using Sounds of Intent are excellent ambassadors: “As a teacher it has enabled me to measure small progressive steps, monitor pupils’ achievements, manage musical intervention, and show progress where our previous systems failed,” explained Victoria Hubbard, Head of Music at St Luke’s Primary School in Scunthorpe.
“Parents too have found it interesting to see how much progress their child has achieved musically in short periods of time where progress in other areas has been minimal,” she added. “We have seen pupils begin to vocalise where they have made little sound before. We have seen pupils begin to react and show preferences to sound where only reflex responses had previously occurred. Thinking more clearly about the path of musical development has enabled the staff to identify pupils who are musically gifted where previously these talents may have gone unnoticed.”
DRAKE MUSIC
One organisation which has been on the front line of music in educational settings (and is also using Sounds of Intent as an evaluation tool for their own activities) is Drake Music. Founded in 1988 by Adele Drake, the charity uses technology and innovative teaching techniques to enable people of all ages and abilities to create, explore and perform music together. Recently it published a new strategy outlining its aims and goals up to 2015.
“Going into schools is at the core of what we do,” insisted Drake Music Chief Executive Carien Meijer to Access magazine. “Over the years we’ve built up expertise in using and adapting mainstream software and hardware to create bespoke instruments for people who can’t play conventional instruments, so that people can access music making. We can give people control, not just when it comes to accessing music, but also–like their peers–progressing in music making.
“It will be different things for different people, but there’s control over the music-making process–learning to make music, participating in it, progressing and achieveing something,” she added. “Often expectations are quite low, on the part of other people and organisations, as to what disabled musicians may be able to achieve.”
Drake Music recognises, though, that some people will want to take music further, which is why their current strategy is also focused “on developing emerging and more established disabled musicians”, according to Meijer. |Regardless of any barriers, they want to be known for their music,” she explained to Access magazine. “It’s about encouraging progression and innovation in music, and multi-disciplinary work.”
THE BRITISH PARAORCHESTRA
Nor are they alone in this goal: providing a visible plaform for musicians who happen to be disabled is at the heart of the British Paraorchestra which, less than a year after its creation, performed alongside Coldplay during the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games. More recently, they received one of the Prime Minister’s Big Society Awards.
“I conduct orchestras around the world, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of disabled musicians I have encountered anywhere,” explained the orchestra’s founder and its artistic & music director Charles Hazlewood. “It is virtually impossible for anyone from this community to make a living as a professional musician. The British Paraorchestra is pioneering a global movement to recognise disabled musicians with extraordinary abilities, and to end the limitations placed on them, not by their physical ability, but by lack of opportunity.”
Despite being visually and hearing impaired, clarinettist and composer Lloyd Coleman from South Wales was one of the first members to join the orchestra. “Most of my performing is now done through the Paraorchestra, it gets me out of the house and away from the desk,” he explained. “Putting the disabilities to one side, as an ensemble I think it is truly groundbreaking because it mixes together all sorts of musical cultures, instruments and identities. I think the audience can expect surprises; I think that’s very much at the heart of what the Paraorchestra is all about – taking the familiar and doing the unfamiliar.”
MORE:
THE BRITISH PARAORCHESTRA
www.paraorchestra.com
SOUNDS OF INTENT
www.soundsofintent.org
NDCS”
“How to make music activities accessible for deaf children and young people”:
0808 800 8880; www.ndcs.org.uk/music
First published in Access, Issue 12 (January 2014).
