Professional Relationsips in Community Music - Part 2 - Devising a session to explore this topic.

Desiging a Project

This project is about where these two groups of people interconnect and interact within the world of participation and learning within the arts. More specifically it is within the learning and participation departments of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (called BSO Participate) and their freelance music leaders who deliver the bulk of this work (BSO Associates). This project will bring the BSO associates and the BSO Participate management and administrative staff together to explore these relationships and how they can be at their best.

The discussion of this topic is not regularly broached because, in my opinion, of the fundamental differences on how their time is valued. A worker's time is valued is many ways. Artistic power, enjoyment, satisfaction and money (as well as many others). The simplest to look at is money. A salaried employee has a constant stream of income which does not change depending on what they are doing. They have a job description and the employer has a duty to ensure that they are growing in their role. Therefore, the employer has a vested interest in investing in the wellbeing of the employee and will expect them to take time for this as part of their job. This is certainly true for many roles in arts organisations and is certainly true for BSO Participate.

This is less true for freelancers in general whose time is valued in a different way. Freelancers are paid a certain amount to deliver a specific project within a specific timeframe. Planning may or may not be part of this fee, but the assumption is that the freelancer is taking on their own personal development. In most cases the arts organisation does not pay the freelancer to develop their own artistic skills. They may offer CPD if something is being brought in for other staff such as if management staff are having leadership or teamworking training. However, this is often offered as ‘you are welcome to attend this session if you wish’ not ‘we want you to attend as this will be beneficial to you and to us, and therefore we will pay you to be there’. The salaried staff are being paid to attend as this will be regarded as part of their job. In my view, arts organisations can do more in this area, to bring their freelancers into the community and imbed them in their work.

Do arts organisations have a duty to their freelancers in this way? In my view they do, for two reasons. Firstly, long term freelance relationships do not have the same protections as those of salaried staff, and this area produces anxieties and worries on the side of the freelancer. Care around this area will go a long way to support the wellbeing of freelancers. Secondly because the relationships between the freelancers and the salaried staff is crucial in producing authentic and enriching work which can only happen when all involved bring their best to the project.

Serendipity and the Session

To delve into this topic a session was created to involve BSO Participate staff and the BSO Associates. This took place on 9th May 2023 in Bristol, bringing together BSO Participate Managers, coordinators and administrators along with BSO Associates as part of the annual BSO Participate away day.

Each year these teams get together to share experience, updates, discuss the vision of the BSO and BSO Participate, connect with and learn from each other. The Associate's programme was launched in 2014 in response to the enormous area that BSO covers, from Portsmouth in the South of England across Dorset, Devon and Cornwall and to the Scilly Isles, an area of nearly 10000 square miles. The travel involved in covering this area is mitigated by having local practitioners and experts across the region. This group, of which I am part are called the BSO Associate Musicians.

It was a stroke of luck for this project that the annual away day happened to coincide with the development of this project. The managers of BSO Participate regularly look to the BSO Associates to deliver content on this day, so the opportunity to deliver this session as part of this yearly get together was a fantastic piece of serendipity allowing me to develop and lead a practical session designed to delve into the topic or professional relationships and what they look like when they are at their best.

Session design – being inspired by Appreciative Inquiry

When considering how this session could be delivered a suitable framework was needed to create a space of positive sharing and learning and not of complaint and anxiety. I decided to use Appreciative Inquiry as the inspiration for this session. AI is a methodology which is entirely focused on the positive. ‘The Appreciate Inquiry begins when the organization chooses to focus on the positive as the basis for learning and change’. (Mohr Watkins, 5,  2002). AI is far more than this, it is a roadmap to creating positive futures and a way of engaging with problem solving which embeds a cycle of learning and development.

For a project to be considered a true ‘Appreciative Inquiry’, the entire AI process should be considered by the whole group. This was not going to be possible due to time restraints so I decided to be inspired by AI as a concept and take elements from the structure to serve my thinking, design, delivery and analysis of this project.

AI has been described as a 4-I model by some writers (Seel, 2008) with four headings to guide the structure of an AI project. These are: Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Innovate. As stated above these four stages are to be worked on by the group for this to be considered a true AI project. This was not possible due to the time frame, so I made the decision to be inspired by AI but not limited to it. This gave me a framework for my thinking but allowed the session to grow organically through co-creating the session together in the moment.

Once I had made this decision I was able to share with confidence to all potential participants that the aim of the session was the sharing of positive experiences. This gave the management at BSO an idea of what I was intending to deliver and was met with excitement and enthusiasm. The Participate team asked for a session which would allow all parts of the team to work together, bond, share experiences and learn, so the idea of spending a few hours sharing positivity, building each other up and sharing these connections was of great interest to them.

Following the AI framework to guide my thinking allowed me to consider this project in the following terms:

1.     Initiate

a.     Being inspired by the positive core of AI, forming the session, creating the focus and working with BSO Management to create the session and locate it within the BSO Participate away day.

2.     Inquire

a.     The session itself, working with the group to use music and discussion to delve into the topic of high-quality professional relationships and the factors which enable them to be at their best.

3.     Imagine

a.     This stage collates the themes, ideas, feedback from the session. I would do this stage myself and make sense of what happened in the session, bringing musical, discussion, written and recorded elements together to tell the story of the session and identify elements of learning.

4.     Innovate

a.     Based on the learning from the previous stage, I would develop a new version of the workshop and propose a way forward for the community music world based on what had been learnt.

This approach of bringing elements of AI into the thinking was then combined with my practical skill set as a community musician. The possibility of creating a session which combined AI inspiration, meaningful discussion and practical music making felt like the most authentic and suitable session design. The downside to this combination is that it cannot be considered a complete AI project. However, as a community music practitioner it is important to allow a project to go where it needs to go, to say yes to the group and the needs as I perceive them. My perception is that forming this into a full AI project would have restricted the delivery stage, requiring a very quick iteration of all the stages in one session. I decided that would restrict the depth of learning possible, so resolved to focus the entire session on the ‘Inquire’ stage.

Designing the session in collaboration

The set up for the session was as part of an away day for BSO Participate Management staff and associates. The day would begin with a catchup on the landscape for the BSO as a company and developments within the participate team. The managers would be leading this session and it would include time for all participants to detail projects they have been working on alongside questions they had.

This would be followed by a social lunch paid for by the BSO. After lunch there would be 90 minutes for me to run the session, followed by a closing discussion led by the management team.

This information gave me the context I needed to begin constructing a session to work within the day. With my skills as a facilitator, I knew the placing of the session would allow us all to bond over the first part of the day and the lunch. This would mean that when arriving for the afternoon session, much of the ice breaking, social bonding and space creation would have been achieved all ready. By this I mean that for a group to feel safe to express themselves creatively, much work is done in sessions to create this space by the facilitator. Had this session opened the day I would have approached it differently and built in more ice breaker and warmup activities to bond the group together and build trust and understanding before approaching the topic.

As it stood, this ‘warming up’ or ‘ice breaking’ would have been done through having spent several hours with each other already. This time included a lunch provided by the BSO and for me, this is an important point. Ageing Better (a National Lottery Funded Community Project) found that food ‘helped create a less formal atmosphere which then created an opportunity for people to connect with each other’ (Ageing Better, 2, 2019). The role this social time spent in re-establishing and forging new social connections could be powerful. Second to this, when a group is brought together and a space for food or refreshments is included you cannot know what an individual's personal situation is. One person may be in a place to purchase a lunch or a different cost to another, and this can create uncertainties and anxieties within a group. The provision of refreshments and lunch allowed the group to be on equal footing and enjoy each other’s company through this social time.

Musical Elements

As a music facilitator I decided to include music making as a core part of the session. My associate colleagues and I are all professional music leaders, and as such are all confident and able improvisors. One of the traits for the community music leader, in my opinion, is that of the yes mentality. We say yes to ideas and follow where they go. When applied to improvisation this creates a musical space where anyone can engage. I use improvisation in a session in such a way that it empowers those who are taking part. I say yes to their ideas and contributions.

When ‘improvisation’ is mentioned the most common response is a mild panic followed by the question: ‘but what notes do I play?’. This fear comes from the way music is presented in the UK at school through classical and jazz music mixed with an anxiety of getting it wrong. Music students are taught that there are right and wrong notes and that even the right notes can be wrong if they are not played in tune or with a good sound. The exams which students do in music test whether they can play the right notes in the right order, not a creative freedom of expression. When musicians have trained this way, whether they become professionals or not, they are left with this colouring their experiences. It then leads to the feeling that improvisation is for jazz musicians only, where there is a highly complex language of harmony which allows musicians to find notes that sound a particular way depending on what is going on around them. Many musicians who are trained in the western model have not included improvisation in their musical study, leading to anxiety when improvisation is mentioned.

The approach of community music facilitators does not follow this model. Our approach, my approach is to use music to build communities, to build confidence and self-expression no matter the experience and training that a person may or may not have. I use improvisation as a space where each participant can bring where they are to the session and contribute in a meaningful way through whatever skills or experience they have. These skills might be as a professional violinist, a student of African drumming or complete beginning holding a tambourine. The ability to help any group make music meaningfully together is a hall mark of the experienced and skilful community musician.

My BSO associate colleagues have a similar approach to improvisation and so I knew they would be comfortable in using music in this way, but would this wealth of skill and experience intimidate the BSO Participate team? The answer to this is no. That is another core skill of the community musician, the ability to put everyone at ease and employ many strategies so that musical experiences are a positive force for everyone in the room. Through discussion with BSO Participate management I found that within the management team there was a variety of musical experience. At least one team member was new to the BSO and came from a job outside of the arts, so for them this would be a new experience. For others in the team, there was a variety of experiences using music in this way gained from many years of organising and managing these projects or from being a recent music graduate from university.

This information meant that I would need to build in some element of equalising and confidence building within the group so that music could be used to create a space of confidence and expression. Firstly, I would make it clear there were no ‘wrong notes’ in this session, whatever you were able to contribute, whatever you felt like contributing to the moment was what was needed. Secondly if you decided just to sit back and listen, that is fine. Thirdly I would provide a selection of percussion instruments so that those who did not play an instrument could find some sounds with which they were keen to contribute, again whatever choices were made would be fine, I would say ‘yes’ to the contributions offered and made.

Transdisciplinarity

My approach to this session has been informed not just by AI, but also Transdisciplinary Practice. Alfred Montuori describes the Five Dimensions of Applied Transdisciplinarity which describe how my approach to this work was shaped along with AI. Montuori says ‘The 5 dimensions of Transdisciplinarity are grounded in a set of questions I believe we need to ask ourselves when embarking on any project we believe should be transdisciplinary’ (Montuori, 1, 2013). These five dimensions have impacted how this project was conceived, designed and delivered.

1)     Inquiry-Based rather than Discipline-Driven

This project is an inquiry, it is about delving into a complex topic, working through vulnerability, transforming a space through music and exploring a topic. The improvisations will be led as an inquiry, setting a space and inviting the group to play in a way that sounds right and authentic for them.

2)     Trans-paradigmatic rather than Intra-paradigmatic

One of the core skills of a community music practitioner is that of crossing boundaries between different groups and using music to bring people together and share community. We are what Kushner calls ‘boundary-walkers’ (Kushner, 4, 2001) and through this skill we are able to ‘question and challenge dominant forms of practice’ (Higgins, 6, 2012). This is essential to my version of the community musician, and for this inquiry. It allows me to take the positive core of AI, work with improvisation and delve into a topic that will require a high element of trust from the group.

3)     Complex thinking rather than Reductive-Disjunctive thinking

Community Music making is all about complexity. And any session that contains multiple levels of musical interaction and discussion alongside an exposing and challenging topic will be full of complexity. When this session is happening, I will be attempting to maintain a system which holds all factors at play at the same time to allow all the participants to engage, intertwine and develop their music making and discussions. I aim to allow what is already there to emerge within this system. As Donella Meadows says “We can't impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.” (Meadows, 169-170, 2008).

4)     Integration of the Inquirer rather than “Objective” elimination of inquirer

The session is designed with the facilitator as an essential element, fully integrated in the music making and the discussion. Indeed, this report is written from my point of view. To get a meaningful and authentic piece of learning, this element is essential. It is also a core part of being a community musician. You act as a fulcrum which participants can revolve around, fully integrated into the whirling musical and non-musical elements which make up a community music project. The community musician is attuned to the needs of the participants, to the stresses and strains of the session and adapts skilfully and sensitively to the needs of the moment. This is what Schön refers to as reflecting-in-action (Schön, 1983) and is another core element of the community musician.

5)     Creative Inquiry rather than Reproductive Inquiry

Montuori (4, 2011) writes ‘Creative inquiry is a process of knowledge. Reproductive inquiry does not account for creativity.’ This is clearly the area this session fits in. The knowledge sought and the experiences gained will be based on the experiences each participant has in the room, and combined with the approach of the community musician, this is intrinsically creative.

‘Transdisciplinarity is not, in this view, either a research method or simply a way of doing research that utilizes a number of different disciplines. It is an altogether different way of thinking about knowledge, knowledge production, and inquiry.’ (Montuori, 4, 2011).

This project attempts to bring the ideas of Transdisciplinarity to bear on this topic by using the community musicians’ approach to music making as a way of transforming the space and attaining a deeper and more authentic Inquiry with the positive core of AI at the centre.

Session design

Here is how I described the session in an email to BSO management:

“Ideally the whole group would start together, I’ll give a quick headline - we are focusing on the positives etc - outline on the research (2mins max). Then we would play some music together, improvising how we feel in the moment. (5-7mins).

Then in pairs or 3s we would break off to share stories of when our relationships between facilitators/organisations have been at their very best. Lots of details, creative ways of recording, diagrams, colours, drawings. The people who are listening will take notes for the other. The aim is to drill down it what they look like when they are at their very best. We then share these with each other. Depending on how long it takes we may do a second round in new groups/pairs.

The session would finish with us improvising a second piece based on how we are feeling in the moment. I would record or perhaps bring a camera to film this part. “

This gives an outline of the session like this:

·       Set up

o   Each person has an instrument (s) to play in the session. These will either be self-selected or chosen from a set I will provide

o   Set up in a circle in a room which is private and will not be disturbed

o   A board with flipchart paper and selection of board markers

o   Arts materials available – coloured pens, post its, coloured paper/card

o   A camera/audio is set up to record the session

·       Introduction

o   Outline the focus of the session – what do our relationships between each other look like when they are at their best?

·       Warmup

o   The group is invited to improvise a piece together which represents how they are feeling in the moment now they know what the session is about.

·       Discussion

o   The group are split up into pairs (or threes)

o   Each group is given paper, pens and art materials

o   Instruction:

§  To share stories of when a relationship between a facilitator and organisational member has been at its best

§  The person who is sharing goes into as much detail as they are able, being creative with description and language

§  The others do their best to capture what is said in detail, asking questions, prompting, being creative with this, using colours, diagrams, words, association, a mood map etc

o   Each person takes turns to share stories in the same manner

§  The notations/recordings will become a central record/description of how all these stories are represented. This will allow cross-pollination and connection of ideas and themes

§  These notations will be photographed and kept

o   These are shared back with the group

o   If there is time the groups are shifted and the exercise is repeated

o   The discussion portion finishes with the group invited to draw parallels and share ideas on commonality. What messages are most clear when considering this question?

·       Plenary

o   Finish the session improvising together a second time representing how they are feeling in the moment.

o   Using music in this way will create a sense of closure for the participants as well as a sense of achievement. The group may have bonded on a new level through their group work, and this will be communicated (or the absence of it) in their music making

To make sure I captured this session to inform this report I sought permission to record the audio of the entire session, to take some photos and to keep the written elements from the session. I was also keen to get participants feedback after the session to get another level of insight. To maximise the time, I decided to incorporate this feedback in an easy and quick way. I decided to use WhatsApp voice notes for this as it appeared to be the easiest way of recording their thoughts and feedback and getting them to me. I wanted them to give raw and unfiltered thoughts so I asked each person to share a voice memo of 2-5minutes with their reflections on the session, talking about whatever aspect they felt was most pertinent to them.

To be continued - Part 3 - The session itself