Creative Learning Officer

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019

Paul Harris talk

For November’s in-service day music staff from the YMI project, the Music Instrumental Service and our Music Curriculum Support Teacher’s got together to hear from music educator Paul Harris.

Paul has written over six hundred books about music education and writes for major international music magazines. He performs regularly and is an examiner and an adjudicator at national events.

At our session he talked about his Simultaneous Learning approach to instrumental and singing teaching. There was so much to take in, both practical ideas and the theory of learning. One of the themes that really came across was the need for a teacher to be an empowering guide to their students, collaboratively going on a learning journey with them. His ‘Map of the Musical World’ is a practical presentation of the musical ingredients that learners need to develop. It helps both student and teacher move through, and make connections between, these ingredients to embed the learning and develop their skills.

We are already considering how we can bring Paul back to expand into group or whole class teaching and inspire non specialist class teachers.

November 6, 2019December 6, 2019

Music Appreciation Assembly

Music Appreciation Assembly

Three of the YMI team recently performed songs at an assembly in Earlston Primary schools. The school was running a series of afternoon assemblies bringing in musicians , asking some of the pupils to play their own instruments or listening to music to increase the appreciation and enjoyment of music . the Depute head teacher, Kevin, asked if we could help and Kaela, Jon and Jenni went along in December to play sing and get the pupils up dancing.

It went down well and we hope to help the school invite some other musicians along to inspire the children.

November 1, 2019September 8, 2020

Kakatsitsi Drummers

In October we had a series of workshops led by a Ghanaian group of traditional drummers, dancers and singers from the Ga tribe of Southern Ghana . The came to the UK for a 2 months tour with the arts education charity Indigenous People , who specialise in tour and project management for traditional world music and dance groups, particularly from Africa.

The group visited seven of our schools across the region, delivering a whole school performance followed by class dance and drumming sessions. It was such a fun and high energy experience for the pupils, with an opportunity to experience music and dance from Ghana.

October 1, 2019November 1, 2019

Scottish Opera Tour

The Scottish Opera Primary School tour has been happening for 50 years . Each year, once we get our funding, we apply for 3 or 4 schools to take part across the region and there is always a high demand for spaces . This year’s workshop and performance, Warriors! The Emperor’s Incredible Army, is based upon the true story of Emperor Qin’s incredible 2,000 year old terracotta army.

This year we have managed to combine a number of smaller schools to work together on one show, that will be performed in the bigger school. The project will be delivered to 5 or 6 schools and will take place between April and May 2020.

The pupils learning the songs with their teacher in class, using the resources provided by Scottish Opera. There is a practice morning, led by a SO singing coach, two weeks before the workshop day. Then the performance day it is all pulled together by a team of SO staff, with a morning of practice, a dress rehearsal to the rest of the school, followed by a final performance to the parents. it is amazing what the pupils achieve in such a short space of time.

The story line for this years workhop is below.

ll hail Qin Shi Huang – the first Emperor of China, destined to rule his Empire forever. After all, didn’t he drink the Elixir of Life, a potion that promises immortality? Not such a great promise when that elixir turns out to be a deadly poison. Now the afterlife awaits, but even a dead Emperor needs an army. So, over many years, he’s gathered a vast hoard to watch over him after death – 8,000 soldiers, horses and chariots, all armoured and armed to the teeth. And every one of them moulded from clay…

Music: Alan Penman
Lyrics: Ross Stenhouse
Commissioned with the five Scottish Confucius Institutes

September 1, 2019November 1, 2019

Sounding Out

In 2014 a report was commissioned to examine the strengths and weakness of youth music in the Scottish Borders. The writers spoke with a cross section of sectors, music teachers and young people. The report led to the creation of the Borders youth Music Forum ‘Soundcycle’

The full report can be downloaded below.

Sounding Out 2014

July 18, 2019November 1, 2019

What’s Going On Now

In 2018 Creative Scotland commissioned The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, to undertake a major examination of music education and youth music-making in Scotland. Across a twelve-month period from early 2018 to early 2019. RCS took feedback and data from a wide range of organisations and individuals to examine the current state of music education and music making opportunities for young people. It looked at 3 varied case studies, examined the impact of YMI, the schools Instrumental Music Services and explored the formal, informal and non-formal sectors of music education in Scotland.

What’s Going On Now? built on the earlier research Whats Going On published in 2003 and examined the impact of the schools Instrumental Music Services. During the research, RCS reported to the Music Education Partnership Group, which includes representation across a wide and diverse range of partners.

There were many valid points highlighted in the report by those involved in teaching and delivering music education , such as “Bring it (music) back into the classroom in primary schools and watch the benefits spread across literacy, numeracy and social interaction.”

Some headline data included :

In 2016/17, around 244,000 young people took part in the Youth Music Initiative, with at least 202,000 taking part in school-based activity and at least 42,000 in out of school activity.
It was estimated that around 75,000 young people participated in music activities in the informal and non-formal sectors, an estimated increase of up to 50% since 2002-3.

Music Instrumental Services have been facing cuts in the last few years and in another of our posts we will look at the recent Parliamentary Group that looked in to this. In WGON it was noted that the average proportion of pupils receiving tuition has stayed roughly constant since 2002-3, at around 8-9%. This indicates, the report suggests, that the number of pupils receiving tuition is determined by the supply, not the demand.

Since 2003-4, the number of local authorities charging for instrumental music has risen from 15 to 25, and the average fee has risen from £102 to £220with the maximum fee increasing from £308 to £524. Around 19,000 pupils pay nothing.

The report made four significant recommendations to action:

To TACKLE inequalities in access to music provision
To CHANGE perceptions of music and its purpose
To REALISE THE POTENTIALof music in the school
To FURTHER FACILITATING Experiences and Opportunities

The YMI programme in the Borders is working with its partners and the community music groups to support improvements in all these four areas. These include Live Borders, the Music Instrument Service, SBC music teachers in our schools and the Borders Youth music Forum, Soundcycle. The full report and summary can be downloaded at the RCS website here.

July 1, 2019May 29, 2020

The Borders YMI team

The Youth Music Initiative team in the Borders consists of four music tutors , working in our schools, who are supported by the Creative Learning Officer. We are part of the Education, within Children and Young People’s Services.

Each year we apply to the YMI Formula Fund for the staff team, resources and the external projects that we run.

We work in many of our Primary schools, all of the Support and Complex Needs units and some of the High schools. We compliment the work done by the peripatetic Curriculum Support Teachers (Music), who also deliver lessons in some our primary schools, and we ensure that we visiting each primary school in the region between the two teams.

The YMI tutors are highly accomplished musicians and have taught in schools for many years. Whilst they all have their own specialism they deliver whole class music making lessons, using a wide range of instruments including ukuleles, drums, tin whistles, keyboards and the accordion, as well as using singing and music technology.

Our funding enables us to deliver a number of regular projects provided by external partners, such as the primary school tour by Scottish Opera and Mat the Hat’s ‘ Big Drum Adventure’ as well as other one off projects by touring musician’s, such as the Ghanaian Kakatsitsi drummers.

For more details about what the work YMI team in the Borders is doing and some of our activities we are currently undertaking have a look at some of our Home Learning posts.