Celebrating the AllStars Music project

The AllStars project is reaching an end with our mega-celebration, the Giant Jam, coming up on July 2nd.

What are we celebrating? We're celebrating
- hours and hours of live music played by amazing people with extra special powers
- establishing new friendships and connections
- a training programme that made us think hard about what we do and how it works
- some wonderful 'outreach' workshops and performances
- a chance to explore and reflect at the Listening Lounge sessions
- many surprising, fun, and serious moments
- all the volunteers and professionals who have given generously of their time and inspiration
- all the many individuals and grant giving organisations that support our work
- our partnerships with Wells Cathedral School, Spaeda, the Somerset Rural Youth project and Bath Spa University
- all the parents and carers who have supported all the young disabled musicians we work with

There is a lot more to say. This summer we'll be writing up our reports and evaluating the work. Everything we have learned from all the good people we've met along the way will help us to go forward and reach even more people, spread the music and see what is around the corner.

How do we know what we do is good enough?

It's not unusual to come away from a session feeling significantly better than when you first entered the building - but how do we actually capture that feeling? Those moments?

Evaluating our work is something that is a constant, ongoing process.
We observe, film, photograph, check that we're on track with aims and anticipated outcomes.

Sometimes it's easy, especially when you know people, to see change or capture 'those moments'.
When you're out and about working with new people, the challenges are more complex.

Recently we ran an outreach workshop with 32 students at a local residential college.
We felt it had been a good day, and we asked staff to give us some feedback.

Staff gave us top marks for meeting needs and getting the groups to work together.
What we did was 'age appropriate' ; 'engaging'; and 'easy to follow'.

The sessions were good!  We had everyone playing :
 'It was amazing to see two students who are normally noise sensitive smiling and really enjoying the session'

It was  'Excellent and brought something out in students that would not normally join in'

and, generally ' I loved it on a personal level and the students really enjoyed it – Thank you it was really fantastic.'
 ' Brilliant!'

Russ and Ben in the mood for a tune or two

Some quick tuning up before sessions

All good then.

Otoasobi project

We've been looking at the Otoasobi project from Japan... fascinating stuff.They are a group of musicians, music therapists, indivduals with learning disabilities and their families who play improvised music together.

One thing they say is really interesting - about evaluation. The AllStars team spend a lot of time thinking about evaluating our work, wondering how to understand everyone's different experience of playing music together. Like the Otoasobi project, we have a really diverse group of people playing together.

The Otoasobi project say 'Each of the group members has a fairly different aim  - for example education, welfare, art and joy - so we share a belief that every member has their own ways of evaluation. The creativity energy arises from these discrepancies.'

That is very thought provoking.... the idea that everyone plays together, yet for a different reason... and that this makes creative energy. Wonderful.

Running an integrated group.

Our group exists for young people with learning disabilities, but it's a bit more complex than that....
Over the years, we have always had student placements at our music sessions. We provide support and opportunities for young musicians to experience working within a mixed ability setting.

Vicky

It's also brought us into contact with some brilliant instrumentalists and singers who really do bring a sparkle to group improvisations.
We feel that through offering this experience we've helped young people make higher education choices, and perhaps see music differently.

Gemma

Gemma, who was with us for a year, says ... 'I've ended up going to do recorder and violin at Birmingham Conservatoire instead of computer science'. We asked Gemma if she'd be interested in coming back for some sessions : 'This sounds amazing!  I'd love to come back and take part in the sessions!'
With the AllStars project, we felt that we'd like to open out this opportunity and move towards running a more integrated group - bringing together people from different backgrounds, who have had different opportunities, but have a common love of music.

At the taster session

Our partnerships with Wells Cathedral School continues to grow, and we also now have a partnership with the Elmwood and Penrose Federation of schools in Bridgwater.
This year Wells Cathedral School have stepped things up a bit by agreeing to host our integrated music mentoring sessions - "The Listening Lounge" - which begin in September.
They will help us identify A level music students to join the AllStars groups, and we'll be joined by one of their Graduate Music Assistants, who will be at the school studying for a CME (Certificate of Music Education).

Taster session warm up games

At our tasters this summer so far we met have Bella, Ellie, Esther, Molly and Laura. Laura is from Frome and is interested in a career in music therapy ; Molly is a signed songwriter.
Bella, Ellie and Esther are A level music students from Wells Cathedral School.They're all brilliant and we hope they will all join the group!
Our team of music leaders realise we will have a challenge to meet everyone's needs - but that's what we exist for : that's inclusion. We've said we're all stars in this context, so we need to discover how that works, and what that sounds like.
We all have so much to learn from each other, simply by being in a room where we can work and play together, listen and respond on equal terms.
What will be fascinating will be to observe the outcomes of these two years of 'music education by encounter' that we have planned for the AllStars project.

making music with new friends.....

Playing music together is an age-old way to develop friendships.
Heart Beats aims to give young people physical, emotional and social confidence, whilst having a good time.
We do what we can to evaluate the success of this, but sometimes you get something come through that reminds you it's all on track.
Today I got sent this lovely spontaneous endorsement, a poster made by one of the group.
Making music with new friends....yes.

Evaluation - case study

We're proud to hear that Arts Manager and Evaluator Nell Farrally will be using a Heart Beats case study tomorrow as an example of good evaluation practice. Nell will be sharing this case study with the partners of the Bristol Musical Inclusion Network.

Youth Music project .....

Once upon a time Youth Music funded us to start the Heart Beats project. We hoped it would be successful but we didn't expect it to be quite such fun!
Our support from Youth Music draws to a close, as we have now submitted our final report to them.


Count Me In wants to say thanks to them for making Heart Beats happen. And to our other funders and supporters.

We have worked with 144 young people with a range of needs since we began in January 2012.
During this time,we've been surprised, excited, amazed, fascinated and amused.... we've learned more from our participants than we would ever have expected.

Of course, the Good News is that we haven't finished yet - Heart Beats is up and running, and judging from our last session, more fun than ever.

Interim reports done!

Yes, all those rainy days of form filling, evidence gathering, teeth grinding, spreadsheets, tea drinking and general evaluating have been bundled up and submitted in one big information cloud to Youth Music..... phew.
Cheers, team.

Heart Beats news

It's so great to be underway with this fabulous project - another fine session last Thursday.
Lots going on!
We're putting our evaluation strategy to the test, with a visit from our evaluator Nell to the session last week.
The trainees Iona and Sophia have had their induction session and are ready to rock'n'roll.
Musician in residence Declan is now a fully fledged team member. Thanks for the great song last week Declan!
I'm visiting our partner project SOUNDSCAPES to sit in on their 'improvisation' taster session next week.
We're organising our parallel mini-series of workshops which we hope will happen at Critchill school in Frome.
We're plotting and planning our Professional Development day which will happen in late spring / early summer. We've got our eyes on someone really good to lead this day, and there will be a few places for sale .... more info to follow soon.
And, last but not least, we're starting to wonder about how to spend out equipment grant from the Somerset Community Foundation. Mmmm - lots of nice things out there. Send us your ideas.
Russ wants : a steel pan...
I want: big fat chime bars....
What do you want?

Project Evaluator joins the Blog

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to the blog, Jane.  I'm hoping that the blog will be good source of evaluation evidence for the project.

I'm looking forward to visiting the next Heartbeats session on 8th March.