An animateur’s world

John Webb working on a Britten Sinfonia project at a nursery in Cambridge (Photo: Claire Borley)

Today I’m working with a year 5 class – they are attending a children’s concert, and I’m leading the first of four workshops to introduce them to the music they’ll hear and to collaboratively create a piece they can play themselves. Tomorrow, I’m working with teachers exploring re-rite – a digital installation of The Rite of Spring: their classes will be visiting the exhibition, so I’ll be attempting to inspire the teachers with ideas for activities they can do themselves. On Friday it’s the second workshop for a music theatre collaboration: four classes each producing their own short music theatre piece.

Over the next few weeks a project begins with year 2 classes and teachers. The aim is to give teachers greater skills in using music as a tool in the classroom, in a similar way in which art and design activities might be part of a larger topic.

And for the rest of the academic year, there are a couple of Early Years projects, an opera-writing project with three year 5 classes, some family workshops, some student training, and a few other bits and pieces.

My life as an animateur is extremely varied, lots of fun, exhilarating and challenging; it requires loads of energy and creativity. I’ve also worked as a regular teacher: after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music as a postgraduate composer, I taught part-time at secondary level, at the Junior Academy for 12 years and lectured at Birmingham Conservatoire. Now I’m a freelance animateur and composer – though frequently the former rather than the latter.

Being an animateur is very different from being a teacher. I work with groups on projects often lasting just five or six sessions. I don’t focus on a set curriculum, or the skills needing to be in place to support the learning of curricular content. An animateur animates a group’s artistic learning, encouraging a strong level of independence and creativity. I assume that participants, at whatever technical level, are capable of creative choices and that those choices will (mostly!) be appropriate to their ability. The animateur provides frameworks to enable the participants to create something which is distinctively theirs: the resulting work could only have been created at that moment, with those particular individuals in that particular place. Ideally, the animateur’s work is:

• Personalised – the animateur provides an open framework in which all the participants can find their own place according to their level of ability;
• Creative – the animateur allows participants to make creative decisions about the workshop outcomes (which may change the entire direction of a workshop). To do this, the environment has to be safe – participants must feel that their suggestions will be taken seriously and that all contributions will be accepted as possibilities;
• Collaborative – possibilities and outcomes are negotiated rather than imposed. The group decides which suggestions to use;
• Exploratory – suggestions are tried out and participants solve problems through experimenting with possibilities;
• Practical – the work is physically active rather than theoretical;
• Fun – we learn better if we enjoy what we’re doing.

These are personal ideals, and I’m not sure how far other animateurs would concur. Practical situations can make achieving them problematic. For instance, if the group have not developed strong collaborative skills, I may have to frame creative choices more tightly, and carefully impose decisions, but in such a way that the group does not feel dispossessed of its work.

The pedagogic model for the animateur (or perhaps just me!) owes much to constructivism, in which learning is considered to be an active pursuit (the learner exploring and experimenting) rather than the more traditional model of classroom education in which the teacher (holder of knowledge) transfers information to the eager student. For the animateur, learning is active and the outcomes are unknown at the start. Rather than the lesson plan being ‘learn to sing song x’, it is ‘create song [and the group has no idea what this will be], then learn to sing it’.

In some ways, an animateur mines a group’s creativity. But being creative can be much harder than it sounds. People need to feel happy, engaged and confident in order to share their interesting ideas; they need to know that the ideas will be heard and not mocked, and have the self-confidence to offer them in the first place. They also may need to see a variety of possibilities (and their outcomes) in order to be aware of creative choices in the first place.

Games

The key tools used by the animateur to unpick a group’s creativity are games. Games allow for spontaneous decision-making within a set of rules – for interaction promoting collaborative work. They are fun and challenging and can send a subliminal message that this isn’t your usual learning environment – the usual rules don’t necessarily apply.

An example is the game I call ‘Clap-click’. When the leader claps, then everyone else clicks in response. And vice versa – when the leader clicks, everyone else claps. New actions are added in pairs suggested by individuals in the group: the more outrageous the better (for example, Jump – Splat). The leader chooses one of the actions, the group gives the correct response. More pairs of actions (so there could be six or eight being used) may be added and turns are taken in leading. The game is fast, relies on wits and exalts in silly suggestions (the whole group will have to do it!). It breaks the ice and gets everyone thinking of possibilities.

Another example is a chant I use called ‘Hello’ which can hopefully build individual’s confidence in singing, as well as allowing for a lot of creative re-interpretation. I sing a call and response ‘Hello’ to the group: it’s several phrases long and they have to sing back each in the same way (I’ll change pitch and dynamics, giving a sense of the creative possibilities). I then ask if anyone would like to sing their own ‘Hello’ for everyone to answer. The individual might sing, speak, half-sing, squeak, use a comedy voice – whatever is offered is imitated by the group; they are discovering the range of their voices and need to be allowed to play; later on I’ll focus on finding their singing voices. Through the acceptance of all possibilities, invididuals gain confidence that their offering will be heard and accepted, and then copied – they can hear back exactly what they have just offered.

Good games are intrinsically rewarding. For example, I once worked with a reception class, including three or four very badly behaved boys, who would continually disrupt activities. The first workshops were demanding, but gradually these difficult boys began to realise that taking part in the games was more fun than disrupting them and they began to play them properly and well. Becoming engaged in the group’s activity was something they hadn’t really achieved at this early level of their education; hopefully, this was a step in the right direction.

Where’s the real work?

How does the animateur’s work stand in relationship with that of the instrumental or classroom music teacher? With regard to the latter, there are obvious overlaps. But, there are potential conflicts too. You may have read this article and be thinking that music workshops are only about having fun and playing games. What about technique? Posture? Discipline? Where’s the real work? Where’s the student’s effort?

There are cultural assumptions about learning which we must be careful not to accept uncritically: that all learning must be effortful; that play is a break from learning; that to learn something we must be taught it. Montessori said ‘play is the work of the child’, and it is through playfulness we often foster interest, enjoyment and engagement in the learner. So, when do we learn our scales and theory, and develop the technique to play that repertoire of amazing music to which this generation is privileged to have access? The workshop environment cannot provide this type of musical instruction; if you want to be a classical musician of any standard you can’t shirk the hard graft associated with that journey.

So, is there a cultural assumption that all aspiring musicians are on the path to becoming classical performers? If so, I have a problem with this. There are jazz performers who seem to have atrocious techniques yet, because they are improvising or playing music they have written themselves, it seems to be enough for their music. Their technique fits with their own expressive musical world. The technique drilled into instrumental students makes stylistic assumptions about the music they will (must?) play and by implication admire. The classical route is well-trodden, but one from which many fall off; I’ve met several who have done so and are now primary classroom teachers who, instead of relishing the opportunity to use their prodigious instrumental skills, fear performing to others. The last thing they’d think of doing is getting their instrument out and using it in class. This is the legacy of their classical music education.

It seems to me that the traditional approach to music teaching (and this approach is one which, I feel, has been prevalent in the classroom) assumes that a certain trained elite will provide the culturally important music for our society, be it playing the canonic repertoire or producing new works. This is at odds with my sense of music being an inclusive community activity, which must have formed part of its basic prehistoric and evolutionary purpose.

I would like to think that the role of the animateur can help to broaden the music education culture, as well as the musical culture more generally, in order to bring the elite back into the community and at the same time encourage the community to see music-making as an enjoyable experience for all comers regardless of their musical ability. Active music-making is an entitlement and possibility for all. Animateurs have a role to play in facilitating a creative engagement between the skilled professional and the so-called ‘non-musician’.

John Webb is a freelance animateur and composer working for organisations such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Wigmore Hall, OperaHouse Music Projects and Excellence in Cities. He would like to thank all those other wonderful animateurs and teachers who have inspired him and from whom he has (without shame or guilt) stolen all the games and ideas he possibly could! He joined the ISM in July 2009.