Assigning Value to the experience of a Community Music Session To start this seminar I would like to invite you to ‘experience’ a quasi-community music session. So, I’d like to get you all on your feet and get you singing. This is only an easy example that will involve just singing without any creative input from you but will give you a rough idea of community music making. I this mearly one of many types of music making that falls under the community music umbrella (which I will talk about more later). Activity Lead a song – moose song – with actions. Having now all had an ‘experience’ (of a sort) of a community music session we can use that as a point of reference during this presentation and discussion. I plan to talk from my paper with PowerPoint. for just under half an hour before opening up for discussions and questions. This seminar is presented as work in progress as part of my larger research into the evaluation of Community Music projects. The aim of the overall research is to generate theory regarding the current practice of evaluation in community music activity and also highlight examples of best practice in order to facilitate better evaluation by practitioners themselves and to assist them in their work. I intend to give a brief background to the larger study, which is one of only very few in this new area of inquiry within academia, and then demonstrate one way that could be used to evaluate the experiences that occur within a community music session. This approach is needed as there is a growing call by funders and large bodies involved in community music provision for the practitioners and smaller community music organisations to evaluate the work they are doing. This pressure has been met with trepidation and concern by practitioners as the skills are not always present to actually carry out these evaluations and these evaluations will require them to make judgements on the work that they do as well as the activities of the participants which has been something that community music has tried to avoid doing in order to encourage participation and open access. History Firstly I would first like to outline where community music has come from. Community music, with Community arts, grew out of the 1960’s will to return the creation and enjoyment of art (e.g. creative activity, visual arts, music, drama and dance) to the people and to embrace the new popular culture. With recognition and increased funding it has become a field of work for many musicians wishing to encourage music making by everyone in the community. We can trace the origins of the community arts movement and way of working back to the late 19th century. The Victorian/Industrial work ethic (Everitt 1997:34&80) meant that to counter the industrial revolutions need for 9-5 workers there was a call to provide useful and structured leisure time. This resulted in a huge growth of ‘amateur’ arts such as factory based, and funded brass bands and choirs. Throughout the two world wars, amateur arts increased dramatically. The country saw people making music for themselves and a small movement of people encouraging music making through organisations such as CEMA and the Pilgrim Trust. The 1960’s could be regarded as the true beginning of the community arts movement and it sought to challenge the prevalent standards and assumptions about the value of art but found itself judged against them anyway. (Morgan S. In Dickson 1995:16). Some music and other arts had become separated from the majority of the people and some practitioners started seeking ways of taking it back and making it relevant to them again. These pioneers wanted participation and relevance for the people as a whole. But they found themselves having to be judged within the standards set by larger organisations and funders within the dominant. Community arts grew up and were born in this atmosphere of a new age of defiance. It has been described as the "socialist critique of capitalism" (Everitt 1997:80) The participants and instigators saw it as ‘giving people a voice’ as it was used not only for social means but also for political demonstrations. It saw itself as anti-institutional and it used arts to effect social change. (CDF 1992) The 1970s could be regarded as the decade of recognition and response to community arts. The Association of Community Artists was formed in early 1970’s to try and gain funding for ‘community arts’. The Arts Council had confronted issues when funding them as questions were asked about the actual definition of the art form, i.e. was it art at all? What was its artistic value? and they were unsure how the merits of community arts could be assessed. The 1980’s were the time of Residencies at arts venues, schools and other establishments. It was also a time of a change in funding and increased private enterprise in regards to community arts and community music. The 1990’s can be seen as a time of huge growth for community arts and community music. They could be called the educated 90’s as training for community musicians blossomed. With the end of the Conservative stint in government, and therefor control over the funding of the arts, the word “Participation” was added to the Arts Council legislation in regards to arts provision and the UK was brought out of the dark ages as real funding for both projects and capital began to emerge. Throughout this period there has been dialogue as to the worth of community arts and community music work. Much of this discussion has been based around the cultural value of the art form. Because the values held by the dominant culture of the time (western classical art) were at odds with the values as embodied by community arts, there was conflict throughout this period as the weather community arts did indeed have a place and a value within the ‘art’ world. Community arts would have said that it did but that its value reached further than just the ‘art’ world and into social cohesion, community building and personal development. The outcomes, therefore, of a community art event would not only be ‘artistic’ but also ‘social’. The dominant culture’s values did not encompass these and therefore the tension existed and still exists to some degree. The dominant western culture saw value in terms of standards. These standards included standards of performance and composition (in the field of music) and learning. In order for community music to gain funding and therefor survive, it needed, and still needs, to prove itself within these standards and to compete, it needed to present ‘results’ that were comparable. This is still the case and each project that is funded still needs to prove its worth but not only artistic but also social and personal. Definition/context “Music making with people” (Sound Sense 1997) can take place in any number of settings but involves a group of people, very often people who wouldn’t usually have the opportunity, making music together. The session, workshop, project, will more often than not be led by a community musician who may or may not be formally trained. Formal training for community musicians is on the increase as demand for a more professional field is created. The emphasis is on equal opportunities, access, fun and participation. There have always been many definitions of community music and there are indeed many different types of community musicians e.g. ones who work primarily in schools, ones who are venue based – for example some venues run education programmes, and example of this would be The Stables Wavendon, and those who take a social view regarding their role and the outcomes of their work. This social role is more associated with community musicians who began their work during the 60’s and 70’s where, as stated before, it was a criticism of the dominant culture and its standards. It may be useful to extend this definition and state how I am defining it for the purposes of my current research. Everitt offers us a useful three-tier definition: 1. amateur music-making 2. community-based practice 3. educational and outreach work of orchestras and opera companies (Everitt 1997:133) For the purposes of my research, due to time constraints, and through discussions with self-defined community music practitioners I have chosen not to investigate amateur music making activities but to focus on community-based practice and education/outreach work. Community Music activity has also been defined by the different ‘elements’ contained within the work. At a conference in 1990, the ISME (International Society of Music Education) defined Community Music as involving the following principles. 1. decentralisation 2. accessibility 3. equal opportunity 4. active participation These were adopted by Sound Sense as a series of benchmarks on which to decide weather a music project was indeed a community music project. Each project will involve the experiences of a number of different stakeholders. This may include the participants; the session leaders; the host organisation such as a school or arts venue; and the funders such as the local authority or the Regional Arts Board. There is no typical session and no two experiences of a session will ever be the same. How then can we assign value to these experiences? Evaluation Assigning value to an experience of Community music can involve various e-valuation. Many types of e-valuation is currently carried out and although much is concerned with numbers and statistics or personal professional development, some, at least, attempts to ‘get at’ the experience had by each “stakeholder” (although not so much in the case of the funders or host organisations). Methods include feedback forms, videos, reports, discussions and interviews. In a well planned community music project, a group, made up of representatives of all the stakeholders involved, will have set the aims and objectives. These will be typically broad and involve issues such as increasing access, equal opportunities and raising musical awareness – the knowledge that music exists and that the participants too can make their own music. It will usually be these aims and objectives that will guide any evaluation that is carried out. Texts and guidance about the evaluation of musical activity in an educational setting are readily available (for example Assessment & progression in music education by Music Advisers' National Association, Curriculum Panel ) and although some community music does occur in schools or other educational contexts, the expected outcome is more often than not, not specifically ‘educational’. There are few texts which provide guidance for community musicians on how to evaluate their project (one example is Woolf 1999 although it is specifically aimed at educational arts projects) and although some funders do now assist the projects they fund (for example the National Foundation for Youth Music who requires evaluation from all its funded projects but offers advice in the form of a leaflet and phone consultations) the most in-depth evaluations are carried out by external evaluators but this is sometimes not feasible or affordable for many community music projects who run on very tight budgets. Any literature guidance that does exist barely touches on the actual personal experience as encountered by the participants or session leaders. The experience is not only the experiences of the process gone through during the music creation and sessions duration but also the experience of the product. Although there is debate as to weather a project must have a product, many do, (some as a requirement of the funders). During the period of writing this paper I have been engaged in email conversations with a variety of community music practitioners. One in particular, questioned whether we should be evaluating this aspect of a session at all and asked what its eventual purpose would be. He saw the evaluation of the individual experiences had by the participants as not as important at the ‘reactions’ he received and the eventual outcomes. He cites the example of the mentally disabled people who showed the first sign of reaction for 3 months during one of his performances and the boy who returned to playing the guitar which he had been taught after a brief flirtation with D.j.-ing. No-one can dispute that these demonstrate huge outcomes of success for a project in the long term but I argue it would also be useful to understand the short term, instant success of a project so that we can improve the experience. For in this world of fashion and temporary fads, there is the case that community musicians, in order to keep up numbers in their sessions, need to be providing instant ‘good’ experiences. The idea of value is something that is constantly being discussed within the field of community music. What value is the work we are doing? How can it be evaluate – therefore placing value on the work or its outcomes! Grounded Theory My current research is using the method of Grounded Theory as pioneered by Glaser and Strauss (1999). This has, as its fundamental ethos, that any theory created must be firmly grounded in the data from which it is derived. This can happen when there is a constant dialogue and checking by the researcher between the subject and data being studied and the analysis and theory created. This is done through various qualitative techniques the data from which are analysed and then concepts and categories are discovered. Through grounded theory methodologies I have identified various concepts linked with ‘value’ in Community music. These are derived from the data collected through a variety of different means including interviews with community music practitioners and funders, participant observations and simple open-ended questionnaires. Some of these concepts fall neatly into pairs, or sets, of concepts. A number of these concepts could be used to aid the evaluation of the experiences of community music as encountered by the participants. Concepts I will here discuss two pairs that have occurred repeatedly in my research. Firstly, ‘good’ and ‘not good’. These concepts are very often a matter of a simple yes or no, a success or failure, the judgement of this can is one that if very often made very quickly based on an instant impression by the session leader or participant and is very often based on the enjoyment of both of the participants and session leader themselves. Enjoyment is very often linked with the notion of good and not good in community music. If a participant has not enjoyed a session personally then they may well deem that particular session a failure. Enjoyment is more often than not an important factor in the evaluation of a community music session. It is not regarded as appropriate for a session to be not enjoyable. In community music the ends very rarely justifies the means. The emphasis is on the process and the product. This means that these two concepts, 'good' and 'not good' are linked, maybe even inseparably with the concept of enjoyment. We could even swap the set for the idea of enjoyed v. not enjoyed. The second pair are ‘useful’ and ‘not useful’. Was there a use in doing the session? Did the session result in being useful? This pairing is often more associated with the host or funders of a particular project when evaluation in concerned and can be judged on both qualitative and quantitative materials such as cost per head and numbers of people concerned. The evaluation of a community music project will typically be carried out on request of the funding organisation who wishes to measure success and more importantly for them, value for money. Therefore, quantitative data and results are often employed. Both of these concept pairs are incredibly simple, and I believe I need to explain why this is so. This is a deliberate move on my part in order to facilitate evaluation by community musicians. Practitioners are increasingly under pressure to evaluate and judge their own work and the results of this work. This pressure comes from local authorities and funders of each project that takes place as well as host organisations such as schools and day care centres. Many community musicians are not very familiar with common evaluative techniques and those that are find that techniques mostly practised in other fields fail to fulfil the requirements of a musical evaluation when dealing with people making their own music with their own values and judgements. It is therefore vital that any method that aims to help them evaluate any part of the session including the individual experience of the participants be accessible and simple enough to be useful without much extra work to add to their already busy schedules. Matrix In order to visually see the data we need to devise a way of plotting the individual experiences. This would also allow for comparison. This matrix was first introduced to me while I was studying for my Masters Degree in Community Music at the University of York by Bruce Cole, the course tutor. This matrix can be used with any two pairs of axis labels and a useful tool to visualise sets of data. It, again, is simple but this was facilitate it’s use in a community music setting. The two concept pairings can then be combined to and added to the cross matrix. This then gives us four zones of experience where these two pairings are concerned Good/Useful, Good/Not Useful, Not Good/Useful, and Not good/Not useful. Through analyses of the collected data in the form of observations, interviews and feedback questionnaires, each participant and session leader’s own personal experience could be plotted on this matrix. In order to gain the necessary data, precise questions would need to be targeted at the participant or session leader. These could be a very simple yes or no type question although this would not allow for variation within each zone. But, this method does mean that the actual data collection methods would not have to be altered which would put further pressure and raise new issues with community musicians. When the data has been analysed and plotted on to the matrix it may look something like this. This could then be used to see where most people’s experiences lie. This then would form part of an overall evaluation of the project as a whole and inform future practice. For example it is unlikely that you would aim, in future practice, for an experience at point A. This is could be seen as much more typical of a western classical music experience of a single session/lesson that puts the emphasis on the product rather than the enjoyment of the process. This would more likely be found within educational settings. You would hope to find more experiences in position B within Community Music although the ‘use’ may contain a more social element. Much of the outcome of a community music project is aside from the actual music. What ever the intended or foreseen outcomes, there will always be others such as new/renewed friendships, social cohesion and awareness and increased group work skills. To illustrate this at work I have attempted to plot the experiences of the participants at a recent COMA South (Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs) contemporary music day to celebrate International Women’s Day that took place in Southampton at the beginning of March. I was given the opportunity to evaluate the day and was given a free reign in terms of methodology. Using the traditional method, very often employed in the community music sector, and many more besides, of feedback forms, I posed questions to the participants and organisers/leaders about various aspects of the day. I have taken some of these questions in an attempt to plot, on my matrix, the experiences of the respondents. To gauge the good/not good axis I used the question “Did you enjoy this event?”. As stated before, the concept pairing of good/not good is often inseparably linked to that of enjoyment in community music contexts. To this question the participants were asked to respond by ticking the appropriate box, there was the choice of Very much, yes, it was ok, not really, and no. To gauge the useful/not useful axis I combined two questions “Do you feel your musical technique has been improved by this event?” and “Do you think your appreciation of contemporary music has been increased by this event?” Both of these questions only required the participant to indicate yes or no. The plotting come out something like this. As you can see, the lack of scale within each of the questions has resulted in simple results that gather around the edges of the map. In order to create a more interesting and useful matrix, more detailed questions would need to be asked. But, this current matrix does give us some clear indications that the majority of the respondent’s experiences are placed clearly in the useful/good zone. This is a good result for the organising committee. The matrix also shows that there were a number of respondents that felt that the day was not useful. This could lead to further enquiry and changes in procedures at future events. Using the above matrix I hope to have showed that value, through evaluation can be placed on an experience of community music in an appropriate manner that could be used by practitioners themselves and would be useful and relevant to them in their own work. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the experience of a community music session can be ‘got at’ and form part of a larger over-all evaluation of the project as a whole. This would require detailed data collection with a wide scope of enquiry but that it can be used, without becoming too much extra work. It’s an accessible way of seeing the success of various aspects of a project. My aim was to present a way that community musicians could see the experiences of the participants in a particular session in order to gauge the instant success of that session. I stated that it needed to be accessible and useful and I hope that that is what I have presented here. 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