Ana Èoriæ
Muzièka akademija Sveuèilišta u Zagrebu
DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
SYSTEM: WORKING ON SOUNDED STORIES
Izvirni znanstveni èlanek / Original Research Paper
Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to present an a/r/tographic research conducted during the growth of the
interdisciplinary program Notes of Love. The program is implemented as an extracurricular
community music activity of the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, in cooperation with the
non-governmental organization Smile for Everyone. The program is designed to spread love for
music culture and reading culture among those groups in the society who don’t have access to the
cultural content in that form, as well as to provide the students opportunities for interdisciplinary
music pedagogy work which is beneficial to the local community.
Keywords: community music, interdisciplinarity, higher music education
Izvleèek
Razvoj skupnostnih glasbenih dejavnosti v visokošolskem izobraevanju: delo na ozvoèenih
zgodbah
Namen prispevka je predstaviti a/r/tografsko raziskavo, izvedeno med razvojem
interdisciplinarnega programa Notes of Love. Program se izvaja kot obštudijska skupnostna
glasbena dejavnost Akademije za glasbo Univerze v Zagrebu v sodelovanju z nevladno organizacijo
Smile for Everyone. Program je zasnovan tako, da širi ljubezen do glasbene kulture in bralne kulture
med tistimi skupinami v drubi, ki nimajo dostopa do kulturnih vsebin v tej obliki. Hkrati tudi
študentom nudi monosti za interdisciplinarno glasbenopedagoško delo, koristno za lokalno
skupnost.
Kljuène besede: skupnostna glasba, interdisciplinarnost, visokošolsko izobraevanje
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Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
Introduction
The role of music teachers in the modern society has changed and expanded in theoretical,
practical and contextual sense. Polisi (2016, p. 13) emphasizes the importance of
developing the professional identity of musicians as a sociological challenge and says that
„there should be no dividing line between artistic excellence and social consciousness“.
Therefore, a music teacher today needs to be educated as a good performer and artistic role
model, planner and organizer, communicator and pedagogue, facilitator, reflective
practitioner, advocate, networker and collaborator (AEC, 2010). The artist-citizen
dimension makes one of the most important parts of his identity, because it implicates an
inclusive engagement with music in different educational contexts (Schmidt-Campbell
and Martin, 2006; Elliott, 2015; Elliott, Silverman and Bowman, 2016; Polisi, 2016).
Integration of music and music education in all aspects of social life though community
music makes culture accessible to all citizens, which can contribute to the cultural
development and wellbeing of the whole society. This shift in thinking about musicians’
professional identity has affected educational and methodological paradigm of higher
education. Music academies are slowly developing their civic mission and becoming
places with “open doors” for different audiences.
As the potential and value of the civic engagement through community music in Croatian
society are still unknown, the purpose of this paper is to describe Notes of Love, one of the
community music creative workshops for children, made by students at Music Education
Department, Academy of Music, University of Zagreb in collaboration with the
non-governmental organization (NGO) Smile for Everyone. The activity is based on
making sounded stories, adapted mostly from the stories from the classical literature.
Every story has a follow-up part made of different artistic activities, which makes these
workshops interdisciplinary in many ways. The target group for workshops was originally
visually impaired children with developmental disabilities, but soon the program widened
the scope to all interested children in different contexts. In the first year of
implementation, it expanded to children’s libraries, parks and nature in the city of Zagreb,
and connected the Academy of Music with many NGO’s, schools, hospitals, children’s
homes and interested students from diverse universities in the local community. The
program of sounded stories Notes of Love also connected students from various musical
programs and their teacher in a transformative process which gives a significant chance to
all of them to explore different ways and contexts of music education practice. In two and
a half years of existing, the program gathered around 15 students. Using a/r/tography as a
methodology, this paper will gather all experiences of the program development, since the
beginning in academic year 2017/2018.
Theoretical background
Development of (music) culture in contemporary society implies a change of the
pedagogic-didactic paradigm of arts education to the organization of activities addressed
to the wider community (UNESCO, 2006 and 2010), which changes the education of
future musicians at music academies in the direction of service-based learning. Gaunt and
Westerlund (2013) cover this growing need of connecting music education and society
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saying that higher education today requires teaching students for flexibility in different
social and cultural changing contexts, as well as interdisciplinary work and collaborative
teaching and learning. In the World Declaration of Higher Education for the 21st Century
(UNESCO, 1998) it is written that one of the core missions of universities, in general, is
„to educate highly qualified graduates and responsible citizens and to provide
opportunities1 for higher learning and for learning throughout life“ (article 2).
Furthermore, it is written that higher education institutions should „educate students to
become well-informed and deeply motivated citizens, who can think critically, analyse
problems of society, look for solutions to the problems of society, apply them and accept
social responsibilities“ (article 9). This demand can and should be applied at music
academies as places that have to raise future music professionals as responsible citizens
which supports the idea of ‘opening the doors’ of the institution to the society. To cover
this fact, Polisi (2016, p. 13) says that „there should be no dividing line between artistic
excellence and social consciousness“.
The idea that music education can contribute to change social climate and increase social
justice explained as ‘activist music education’ by Juliet Hess (2019) is based on
empowering voices of youth to be active in the society. Their creative professional
engagement in the local community makes a ‘bottom-up’ approach to community
engagement, which means that they start to make community-driven projects (shaped by
themselves), rather than institution-driven approach. A community-based approach is
based on the relationship between people and contexts, which means that the most
effective learning happens right in the community itself and it is based on each person’s
experience. Thus, musicians should use the potential of music to engage politically in the
world, connect with others, share experiences through telling stories and music, connect to
the history and various contexts and to think critically about the world (ibid.). This idea
has roots in critical pedagogy established by Paulo Freire (1971). According to
Abarahams (2005), key principles of critical pedagogy are saying that education is: (1) a
conversation where students and their teachers pose problems and solve problems
together; (2) expanding students’ and teachers’ mindsets; (3) empowerment (it comes
through conscientization); (4) transformative for students and teachers; (5) political
because it is questioning issues of power and control. Critical pedagogy puts focus on
developing the potential of both teacher and students, who come out from the process
deeply transformed. In the context of music education, Abrahams (2005, p. 9) poses
several questions that each teacher has to ask himself/herself when planning an
instruction: „Who am I? Who are my students? What might they become? What might we
become together?“ In the context of learning at the university, these questions are crucial
to re-think the curriculum and develop new possibilities to learn which will be connected
to the community, because they engage imagination, intellect, creativity and performance.
Here it is crucial to mention Freire’s understanding of ‘praxis’ as the combination of
action and thoughtful reflection. Partnership between the teacher and students in this
process makes teachers become facilitators of the whole process because it removes
traditional roles where the learning process is based on the transmission of knowledge
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Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
1 Open spaces (espaces ouverts).
from teacher to the student and puts lived experiences in the centre of education (Hess,
2019).
To describe the practical application of critical pedagogy in the university context, notions
of service-learning, experiential learning, community music and university civic mission
will be represented. Through the interdisciplinary approach to higher education curricula
and extra-curricular activities in the community, students and their teachers are
developing their own identity as artists-citizens (Schmidt-Campbell & Martin, 2006;
Elliott, 2015; Elliott, Silverman and Bowman, 2016), which benefits to the holistic and
comprehensive development of both sides (Ravell Barrett, 2016).
Creating of ‘connected curriculum’ (Fung, 2017), a space at the university for critical
dialogue and combination of research, experiential and service-learning, with proactivity
of students, teachers and university leaders, makes a significant shift in the context of
music academies. Challenges that music academies face nowadays in order to re-articulate
their own capacities for the wellbeing of society are numerous. Thus, in order to become
reflective conservatoires, all higher music education institutions need to re-define the
meaning of musical excellence, encourage research activities, educate not only future
musicians, but also audiences, and to implement the ‘curriculum of giving’, which means
that the curriculum has to be connected to the local community and society in general
(Tregear, Johansen, Jorgensen, Sloboda, Tulve, Wistreich, 2016). Experiential learning,
as a holistic process of learning, becomes important in the education of future musicians. It
can be described as the immersion in the experience, with an emphasis on all the senses,
inner impressions of the experience, emotional intelligence and communal experience of
sharing (Kolb, 2015; Beard and Wilson, 2013).
One of the models of experiential learning is service-learning, which integrates the
curriculum and active involvement of students and their teachers in the local community,
with the double aim: (1) to ensure their better understanding of the academic discipline,
the needs and problems of the community; (2) to encourage their civic involvement
(Æulum and Lediæ, 2010). Their transformative and empowering professional, research
and practical work is making a meaningful contribution to the quality of life in the
community. It is similar to volunteering, but the difference is that service-learning has a
strong emphasis not only on the community development but also on the learning process
(ibid.). In most cases, service-learning belongs to the non-formal/informal model of
university’s contribution to the community engagement, because it depends on individual
decisions of students and teachers to participate in extra-curricular activities at the
university and in the local community. According to Baketa and Æulum (2015), formal
approach means an institutionalisation of the university civic mission, as a blend of theory,
research and practice. In that case, interweaving of research and teaching through projects
established at the university and pro-active collaboration of teachers, students and leaders
of the institution, lead to the empowerment of the institution and the local community
itself.
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In order to expand their role in the local community, musicians have to create the space
and conditions for meaningful musicking2 in various, mostly non-formal contexts in the
community. Koopman (2007) describes three main characteristics of all community music
programs (although there are numerous possibilities and forms): participative
collaborative music-making, wellbeing and community development and personal
growth. The flexibility of the format can be seen in several ways. First of all, it usually
includes going to the places in the local community not typical for concerts and
music-making in general. Second, it usually includes using various types of music; usually
it is more likely to be popular and traditional, but the classical is very welcomed. It is very
often connected to marginalized groups of the society. According to Higgins (2012a and
2012b), what matters the most is a safe, supporting and welcoming environment and
invitation, as well as meaningful connections between the people.
Research on community music activity Notes of love
Notes of Love are a community music program developed at the beginning of academic
year 2017/2018 as an initiative of the non-governmental organization Smile for Everyone,
whose volunteer Ana Èoriæ was asked to expand her volunteering practice beyond reading
bedtime stories in children’s hospitals to reading stories with sound to the residents of
Center for Education of the Visually Impaired Children Vinko Bek. As a university
assistant at the Music Education Department, Academy of Music, Unversity of Zagreb,
she decided to include her students in the process, offering them a pedagogical practice
with children with special needs not provided in their regular curriculum. Furthermore, it
was a good chance to develop the idea of ‘sounded’ stories that will be performed in the
stereo space, where sounds come from various sources in the room so that visually
impaired children can enjoy the full surrounding of the story. Each workshop of the
program consists of two parts. First one is the story performance (20-25 min), which is
usually very interactive and it tries to stimulate different senses. The second part is a
follow-up part, usually made of several different activities, depending on the audience.
The obligatory part is to teach children to sing song from the story, which is usually
combined with playing Orff instruments, while with audiences who can see activities
sometimes include visual arts.
Students who want to enrol in the program are aware that it is a task which will not give
them grades. Officially, it is not related to any subject in their curriculums, but basically, it
is related to everything they learn as a theory at music pedagogy subjects, and usually have
no chance to experience in the pedagogical practice (especially working with children
with special needs). The only official ‘award’ they get are volunteer hours from the NGO.
In June 2018, after only 8 months of workshops, the program got the University Rector’s
Award for ‘valuable work in the community, as well as in the academic society’.
Since the very beginning, the program has no funding, which makes a big challenge and
often a barrier to any further growth. All the instruments used in the program are either
personal or in the ownership of Vinko Bek Center. Several guest workshops organized
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Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
2 According to Small (1998), musicking is a term which describes participation in any way of musical
performance – through the performance itself, or active listening, dancing, composing, etc. It observes the
term ‘music’ as a verb (‘to music’).
outside Zagreb were financed mainly by the organizers and from personal resources. In
2020 the program will be completely moved to the NGO Smile for Everyone because the
Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, unfortunately, didn’t show any possibility to
financially support the idea. Smile for Everyone has a plan to expand the whole idea
including more resources from the civic sector, so it will be interesting to see how the
whole story will develop in the future.
Methodology
The main idea of the research process was to follow and explore the process of developing
the community music programme at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, from
artistic, pedagogical and research position (university teacher as an autoethnographer), as
well as from the position of students involved in the program. That’s why the a/r/tography
as a research method was chosen. According to upaniæ Beniæ (2016), a/r/tography is a
form of action research which gives the possibility for a/r/tographer to make a contribution
both in the artistic and educational research field. A/r/tographer’s artist, researcher and
teacher role are inseparable and interdependent and covers interspace of personal,
professional and social, so it demands certain flexibility in the process observing. Besides
interaction between personal a/r/t roles, an a/r/tographer needs to observe dynamic of
interactions in the process of creation, which makes process and context itself equally or
even more important than the result. The specificity of the a/r/tographic method is that it
uses autoethnography as an approach both in analysis and presentation of the results. For
that reason, as a/r/tographer, from this moment in the text, I will write in the first person. In
order to describe collaborative processes, I will use the „we“ formations.
Research questions explored were:
1. How to develop and design a community music program at the university that
will:
a) be interdisciplinary?
b) include different music teaching areas (singing, playing instruments, listening,
creative work, learning about music)?
c) gain quality both in artistic and pedagogical excellence?
d) be inclusive?
e) reach a wider audience and connect spaces in the community?
f) give students opportunity for collaborative teaching and learning and
meaningful additional practice?
g) encourage the social engagement of music academy?
2. What do students learn from the process? What I as an a/r/tographer learn from
the process?
Data used in the research was diverse. As the autoethnogaphy was crucial for the analysis
and presentation of the results, I used my own reflective diary, reports that we had to
submit after each workshop to the NGO (written by the students or by myself), interviews
with students engaged in the program (N=4), online and live brainstorming meetings,
audio-recordings from rehearsals, conversations with colleagues at the open rehearsals (or
presentations at the Academy for blindfolded audience), and my own participation in the
process. Since it was a completely new and different experience both for my students and
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myself, the full participation in the program and collaboration with the students meant a lot
for me as a facilitator. Besides the program itself, I went to explore some artistic ideas and
workshop formats by myself, volunteering alone in one of the children’s libraries. One of
the ideas I managed to explore, but we still didn’t make to realize in the bigger format, was
to develop a story with a concert band, so that children can be on the real stage.3
To conceptualize the process, the further text is divided into several parts: (1) Changing
contexts and audiences; (2) Art and Pedagogy; (3) Interviews with students and (4)
Research conclusions. Each part is focusing on the different part of the program
development. Research conclusions gather all the insights from the process.
Changing contexts and audiences
At the beginning of the program, the initial idea was to make sounded stories for visually
impaired children in the Vinko Bek Center (institution for education and rehabilitation of
visually impaired children, youth and adults). First workshops were organized for visually
impaired children with learning disabilities in one of the children’s libraries of Zagreb
City Libraries. Although the space in the library had really good potential, those first
gatherings showed a certain impracticability with carriage of children and their assistants
from the Center to the library, as well as with the space itself. Since the library is situated at
one of the city markets, the noise from outside was too big. Furthermore, since this was the
space unfamiliar to the children, we decided to move activities back to the Vinko Bek
Center, in their home atmosphere where they move freely and where it is not necessary
that each child has a personal assistant. One more reason which contributed to our decision
was that in the Center we had numerous instruments we could use in our workshops.
However, the collaboration with libraries stayed and expanded on audience who can see,
which opened numerous possibilities for the community development, as well as music
pedagogical development of the program. The dynamics of the program development is
shown on the Figure 1.
Figure 1: The dynamics of the program development
In the second phase of the program (winter 2017/2018) we kept working with visually
impaired children in the Vinko Bek Center as the basis, but we were invited to come back
to several children’s libraries (Zagreb City Libraries) to offer workshops for the children
from local schools. Since those children were not visually impaired, it was a challenge to
adapt the story for the stage performance, as well as to adapt the follow-up part for the
children who can see. The man aim of these workshops was to make school children
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Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
3 I tried it with ethno band Veja at the TradInEtno Festival in Pazin (2018).
appreciate the music and literature and to show them the library as a place where they can
go and find interesting books.
Next phase of the program started in spring/summer 2018 in woods and city parks. We
performed for the kindergarten children at the manifestation Blanket for dreams. It was an
initiative of the NGO Smile for all which organized volunteers who were reading stories
for school and kindergarten children in all city parks and other green areas of the city. It
was a good chance for all teachers to apply their class to make a small field trip to the
nature enriched with storytelling. After that, we were invited by the organizers of the
manifestation Plants and Gigs4 to set two workshops in the woods of Tuškanac. We
adapted The Night Gardener for both children and their (grand)parents together, which
inspired us to keep this idea for the future (especially for the story The Dog and the Double
Bass, which is originally written with the idea to include children and their grandparents as
audiences).
In the academic year 2018/2019 as a group, we decided to make less workshops mainly
because of my absence at the university in the winter semester. However, we decided to
present the concept to our colleagues at students forums in the region, in order to
encourage students and teachers of music academies to try the same in their contexts.
Thus, we performed stories at music academies for blindfolded audiences because we
wanted to put the audience in the “shoes” of visually impaired audience. In April 2019
students Mirta Borovac and Barbara Laliæ presented the paper5 they wrote about the Notes
of Love at the 5th International Forum of Music Pedagogy Students at the Academy of
Music, University of Pula. At the same event, we performed The Night Gardener and
conducted a follow-up workshop for university students and their teachers based on
creative artistic and pedagogical tasks related to the story development. After student
forum in Pula, the program was presented on the manifestation Podijelimo znanje at the
Academy of Music, University of Sarajevo in May 2019.
In the academic year 2019/2020, we decided to go deeper into each aspect of the program
and explore more formats and audiences. With The Dog and the Double Bass we
developed original storyline and explored more space and sound solutions that could work
with visually impaired and blindfolded audiences. In October and November 2019 we had
three workshops. The first one was in the Vinko Bek Center. Two workshops were
organized6 and performed in Ljubljana: one of them was prepared and performed for
visually impaired children in Centre IRIS – Centre for Education, Rehabilitation,
Inclusion and Counselling for the Blind and Partially Sighted. Another one was
performed in the same institution for bachelor students of the music education study
programme of the Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana. The aim of the workshop
with blindfolded students and teachers from the academy was to encourage them to start
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4 Plants and Gigs (Biljke i svirke) is an interactive music festival which since 2016 transforms green areas
of Zagreb into unique concert spots. Organizers of the festival set out pianos in the nature, inviting citizens
to come and play. Festival is gathering professional classical, jazz and rock musicians who set their
concerts in the nature (https://hr-hr.facebook.com/pg/biljkeisvirke/about/?ref=page_internal, access:
2.1.2020).
5 Laliæ, B. and Borovac, M. (2019). Note ljubavi: uèenje zalaganjem u zajednici kroz community music
praksu. In: Drandiæ, D. and Andrijeviæ, T (Eds.), Kompetencije studenata glazbene pedagogije – teorijski
i praktièni aspekti. Pula: Sveuèilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli, pp. 44-52.
6 The whole organization was done by Branka Rotar Pance, Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana.
similar programs at their university. Both workshops were a true learning process for both
sides since there was a certain language barrier, but the music crossed all the imaginary
frames, showing the growing need for interdisciplinary collaborations between teachers,
students and academies in general. Besides The Dog and the Double Bass, as a facilitator
who created the whole program from the very beginning, I decided to start one more group
of performers that will gather interested volunteers from the NGO Smile for All who have
an affinity for music and who can start the same process as me and my students did. The
reason why I decided to make two divided groups was to make more possibilities to cover
all the places in the community we visit and give them more materials, as well as to share
all the experience in order to make the program grow. Also, helping the other group to
grow might be a good opportunity for the students, who will graduate from the academy
very soon, to enrol new groups as facilitators and spread their own ideas and experiences
inside.
Art and pedagogy
This chapter describes the development of the program in an artistic and pedagogical way.
The process of work on five different stories will show the growth of the idea in both
directions, based on the mutual communication between the students, me as a facilitator of
the program and audiences.
The story we started with was The Wizard of Oz, a well-known story by L. F. Baum. As a
starting template, we used the text adaptation by F. R. Robinson which was published as
the children’s book with ‘finger sounds’7 in Croatia in 1994. The first idea was to divide
characters between each other and re-write the text for ‘the stage’. Since it was the first
workshop, we didn’t make many changes in the text and there were no interventions in the
storyline. For the musical part, we decided to use the song Over the Rainbow (Harold
Arlen/Yip Harburg) from the famous movie, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios
Inc. in 1939. In the space where we performed the story (library), we didn’t have a piano,
so we decided to use only a guitar and some Orff Schulwerk percussions. Since at the
beginning of the program we didn’t know what to expect and how will visually impaired
children react to the workshop we prepared, we decided to start simple. Regarding the
usage of the space, only one person who played the guitar was ‘static’, while the rest of us
moved each time when the ‘yellow brick road’ appeared in the storyline. For that purpose,
we composed a small musical pattern for singing and playing, while marching all over the
room. There were some ‘unexpected’, smaller sounds we added spontaneously during the
performance (for example, dog bark sound for Toto).
In the follow-up part after the story, we realized that the group of visually impaired
children with various developmental disabilities react better to the sounds than to the story
itself, especially if the story had too many characters, so we realized that for next stories
we have to choose simple plots and add the variety of sounds inside. Children reacted
really good on the process of learning by ear that we used for learning the lyrics and
melody of the Over the Rainbow song. Also, we gave them percussions to try following
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Ana Èoriæ, DEVELOPING COMMUNITY MUSIC ACTIVITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION...
7 When reading the book, a child can press a certain sound with his/her finger. Sounds are representing each
character and the text is suggesting to press the drawing of the figure each time when it appears in the
storyline.
the meter and rhythm. For some of them it was quite hard because they have less
developed motor skills due to their disability, but since it was a small group, each of us had
time for an individualised approach. At the end of the workshop, the children wanted to
share songs they know with us, so we made a good connection for further encounters.
Teachers-assistants who came with the children gave us some advice on how to work with
the specific group we got. We noticed that several children in the group have perfect pitch,
although their mental age is not equivalent to the chronological age. Also, students were
surprised with the velocity of learning lyrics and melodies, comparing this experience
with their experience with the learning by ear in the school with children who can see.
Since this was the first workshop in the unfamiliar context for everyone, I was leading the
follow-up part. For next workshops, I decided to share follow-up parts amongst each other
because we noticed that children attach to certain voices (characters) from stories, so it
would be a good chance to increase interaction and give students a chance to practice
various pedagogical tasks.
Second story we chose was The Nutcracker. For the beginning, we took children’s book
based on the original story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann. We
completely simplified the basic text, putting out some characters, in order to adapt the
story for the group of children from the Vinko Bek Center. As a musical solution, we chose
to implement several Christmas traditional and popular songs children can sing with us
(we noticed that canons are really interesting for them, especially when we performed it
while moving throughout the space), as well as music from the ballet Nutcracker by P. I.
Tchaikovsky. For that purpose, we made riddles and movement activities for active
listening. At the end of the story, children were singing songs and playing Orff
percussions. Furthermore, we explored possibilities of making various sounds with
everyday objects (for, example, in one part of the story they get candies in hands, so we
used candy covers to make some noise). The combination of singing, playing, dancing and
listening activities, as well as of classical, traditional and popular music, enriched the
workshop and put it at some new level, so we decided to keep the same combination in
every story we do.
The Nutcracker was the story we performed every year in the Christmas time, usually in
various combinations of students. For example, there were cases when we had only two
students who have a workshop with kindergarten children, so then we adapted the story
for only two characters: grandma who is telling the story and her granddaughter Clara8).
Depending on the group of performers, their competences and instruments they play, as
well as contexts where we perform, we adjust the text and the music inside. There is a
moment in the story when Clara goes to sleep when we usually sing or play a lullaby.
Depending on the crew, at some workshops, we had students from the Singing Department
who sang some famous lullabies from the Western classical music repertoire (for example,
Offenbach’s barcarolla Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour). In general, in all contexts we
performed, both for visually impaired children and children who can see, we noticed that
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8 Clara is one of the main characters from the story. She is getting the Nutcracker doll as a Christmas
present. The doll becomes a real prince afterwards and takes her to the Land of Sweets. On the other hand,
grandma is not the character in the original story, but we decided to invent this in the storyline because we
had two female students who performed a workshop, so it was more authentic to have a grandmother
rather than a grandfather, who is planned in the original story we took.
all of them were listening to the music very carefully. In the conversations with children
and their teachers after workshops, we got information that their favourite part of the
workshop is the music itself, live performed.
Working on The Bear and The Piano, a story by David Litchfield about the bear who is
exploring his talent for piano playing which brings him from the woods to the big city
concert halls, but also back to his friends and family in the woods, was the first step to the
exploration of recording sounds for the story. It was the first workshop where we
combined live performance with sounds that we reproduced using small JBL’s portable
speakers. Since we used our personal two speakers, we tried to explore how the sound
“travels” in space, in order to get a more “stereo” sound in the room. For the beginning, we
had sounds from the woods and traffic sounds from the city, designed to illustrate two
different scenes in the story. Besides the fact that using recorded sounds during
storytelling was very surprising for visually impaired children, who were constantly
asking us ‘how did we do that’, it was a good chance to include more students in the
program. In this case, we had a student from Theory and Composition Department, who
wanted to participate in the program in spite of the fact she can’t come to rehearsals, so
recording the sounds was her idea for participation.
Working on this story was a meaningful step forward for us because it was the first time
we composed songs for the children and we also invented some characters who do not
exist in the original story because we had more performers than characters in the story.
Even the title of the story was different, The Bear and the Guitar because we couldn’t use
the piano in the spaces where we performed it. It was the first story when we started to
think about the meaning of the stage direction because we had to watch on the movement
in space during a live performance of songs, reading text and implementing recorded
sounds in the performance. Furthermore, since this was the first story which we performed
more than two times, in various contexts, we started to think about the importance of the
expressive reading of the text and started thinking about the possibility of learning the text
by heart. This thought came naturally because we had workshops with children who can
see us, and that gives a whole new dimension to the performance. Although we managed
to work on expressive reading with the professional radio drama director in future work,
we still didn’t manage to learn everything by heart. The main reason is the lack of
rehearsals where we naturally, as musicians (not actors), always focus more on the
musical part. Besides that, we have a lot of workshops in the community, which doesn’t let
us time to go so deep into the performance level because the focus is on interaction with
children and the follow-up activities. However, the question stayed open and we are still
working on finding the right balance for our workshops. We encouraged the reflection
about our workshops at the Academy of Music in Zagreb when we shared this story with
critical friends (students and teachers) who came to our workshop. We asked them to be
blindfolded in order to experience the story the same as the visually impaired children
approach it. It was interesting and valuable for our future work to observe their reactions
and hear their impressions.
The Bear and the Guitar was a meaningful step towards cohesion of the group, as well as
the autonomy of each student, who was now ready to work on each aspect on their own. As
a facilitator, I could let them be more free in an artistic and pedagogical sense. The first
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opportunity to do that was our next story – The Night Gardener by T. and E. Fan. It is a
story about the town transformation by a mysterious gardener who is sculpting tree tops in
the street during the night. A boy named William, who lives in the orphanage in the street,
is observing the change that it makes for the people living in this street and the creation of a
true community. At the end he founds his purpose by learning how to garden from the
gardener. The story carries a message about the importance of the community,
participation and respecting the nature, so it was a good chance for us to think carefully
about the follow-up part, combining elements of music, art, ecology and citizenship
education in it. Considering the fact that this children’s book has not much text and there is
a lot said by illustrations, we had to develop almost the whole text and several additional
characters. As a teacher, I was facilitating the process, but one of the students worked on
the text. Also, it was the first time we had a guest expert from ‘outside’ who wanted to join
us. Eva Simona Kulenoviæ, a psychologist with an educational background in art therapy,
performed several workshops with us and helped a lot with the artistic follow-up part we
did with children who can see. This was the first story we didn’t do first with the visually
impaired audience, so it was designed originally for the children who can see. We
performed it for children and their parents in the woods Tuškanac, because we wanted to
share the whole ‘community idea’ of the story with children and grown-ups together.
Nature inspired us to collect leaves and fruits from the woods and bring it to the workshop
with visually impaired children, so it was the first time we started to think more about the
sense of touch we have to implement more in our workshops.
In each story, we had a moment when children meet the instruments we bring with us
when visually impaired children had a chance to touch the instrument and feel the material
together with the characteristic sounds. This was the time when we started to think about
the value of touch in some other parts of the story, so we performed The Night Gardener in
the Vinko Bek Center on the floor covered with leaves and fruits from nature. Children
gave us very positive feedback about that, touching the ground and feeling the nature,
which gave them a sense of the place where the story happens. Since we started with more
interdisciplinarity with this story, the idea was to make sculptures of their own small trees
with clay, but unfortunately, we couldn’t realize this due to some material costs we
couldn’t afford to ourselves. The musical part was covered with songs from the children’s
album Mjesto za mene by duo Meritas, as well as some well-known classical pieces (for
example, The Wild Horseman, op. 68. No.8 by R. Schumann). For additional sounds, we
played on various instruments and everyday objects (for example, we sang a canon
playing the rhythmic accompainment on scissors).
The beginning of the academic year 2019/2020 was the time when I decided to have two
groups of people to make the program grow. A new one, made of people from the NGO,
took The Nutcracker as a start and had two workshops – one in the Vinko Bek Center and
the other one in children’s library. An “old” one, had some significant changes because
some of the students graduated in the meantime. In the pedagogical sense, there was a shift
made by the fact that we got several students from instrumental departments who joined
the program, which ensured that all the members of the group play and sing during the
performance. Considering the fact that we decided to go deeper into the material and
explore every aspect of the workshop, it was extremely valuable that we got a stable group
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consisting of students who already have two years of experience in the program and
readiness to explore all the possibilities of the story, sound, speech and pedagogy, as well
as new students who can approach more into the sound itself. What must be mentioned is
that students from the instrumental departments usually have a chance to practice their
pedagogical skills in individual classes, so this format of workshops was new and
challenging for them in that sense, too.
This time we decided to write our own story and as much music we can. Since I already
had some inspiration to do that, I wrote the story The Dog and the Double Bass, based just
on the idea of the children’s book The Dog and the Fiddle by David Litchfield, but with a
completely different plot. It is a story about two generations and two different musical
worlds. On one side we have the grandmother who played jazz, swing and rock in a band
when she was young, and on the other side is her grandson who plays a double bass in the
music school in a classical way. Grandmother now plays in the classical orchestra and
often plays with her grandson, but the situation changes when her friends, musicians from
the old band visit her and call her to play with them. It is a moment when her grandson
reveals some new sounds, other than classical and when his grandmother realizes that she
can still achieve dreams from her youth. Musically, the story also connects worlds of
classical and non-classical music. Besides the music we composed for this particular story,
we used some of the well known musical pieces from various musical genres: Is You Is or
Is You Ain’t My Baby (L. Jordan), Bass Trip (P. Vasks), Hallo Django (U. Fuhre), etc.
Although the main aim of the story was to connect various musical worlds, encourage
motivation for meaningful musicking and put the double bass ‘on the spot’ as an
instrument with numerous possibilities, on these workshops children have a chance to
meet clarinet, tambura and ukulele (besides the piano and guitar, which are familiar to
everyone).
The initial idea of the workshop was to be performed to the audience made of children and
their grandparents, so the follow-up can be related to the creation of some meaningful
conversations and activities for both generations, that will give more quality for their
leisure time. Still, we are preparing this workshop for the future, working more and going
deeper to each detail of the story. Technically, this was the most difficult story we
prepared, due to the fact we decided to go deep into each artistic detail and learn as much
as we can by heart. The new moment that happened in this process for both groups and
stories is that we got a director of radio drama, who is employed on Croatian National
Radio–Television and a volunteer in the NGO Smile for Everyone, who worked with both
groups on the speech and text, so it gave the program a whole new dimension. Besides
that, going deeper into the artistic part required a lot more rehearsals we usually managed
to have, so for me as a facilitator, it was very inspiring to see the students who are coming
every Saturday afternoon to the rehearsals at the Academy.
Interviews
Although the communication within the group is effective since the very beginning,
semi-structured interviews conducted after the first year of the program implementation
clarified the value of the participation in the program for students, as well as some needs
for future work. I managed to make four interviews out of five students who were in the
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program at that time. What can be seen from their answers is that they highly appreciate
the fact that they are volunteering in the program (without getting any grades):
I like the idea of trying to make the day beautiful for those who need it more and in
general I strongly support volunteer work of any kind. Both tears of joy and mutual
connecting we all love – we have to admit it to ourselves!
Participation in the program gave them motivation for implementation and further
development of ideas in their future work, as well as sharing stories in their local
communities:
It is my desire to spread this way of volunteering further. I have not tried yet, but I
plan to visit one of the associations from the town where I come from and make an
agreement with the director to cooperate, even if I have to tell stories only by
myself. I received the motivation for this at the expressive reading workshop where
I had the opportunity to participate this year.
If I’m going to work in school, I’ll definitely try to carry out extracurricular
activities of this type and I would like to continue working for such workshops for
adults, too. Honestly, I think it’s more necessary for grown-ups to hear the story
than for the kids.
Regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the program, one of the students said that
‘the whole program is synonymous for the advantage’. There were no detected
disadvantages, but the students noticed some needs for future work, which we tried to
cover last year by engaging professionals from the field of dramatic arts:
The advantage of working is certainly an experience in working with children. By
participating in such a project new ideas will be created in the future of future
teachers who will probably try to do something similar in their future workplace.
So far I can not remember the disadvantages. Maybe we need a few diction and
acting classes?
As we can see, what students appreciate the most in the program is the opportunity for
situated learning directly with the children with special needs:
The most valuable experience for me is working with children with special needs.
During the study, such work is rarely mentioned, and teachers meet with such
children for the first time on the spot. It’s a great deal to me because I met these
wonderful children and I’ve been able to see what their possibilities and
constraints are, and I have learned to adapt the program to them and give them
some happiness and joy.
I’m learning the most about real contact with children, their reactions and
behaviour. On the courses (except in Practice) this is the part that is missing, and
that is normal, it cannot be different. But it’s not bad to get that experience
somewhere else, like for example on our workshops.
The conclusions from the interviews were used as a reference point when thinking about
the further development of the program in the academic year 2018/2019, as well as in the
process of planning special workshops at universities.
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Research conclusions
For me as a teacher, the development of the community music program Notes of Love at
the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb was a challenge both in artistic and in a
pedagogical way, but also in terms of organization of every aspect of it. A/r/tographic
research which accompanied the whole process showed that there is a need for finding a
balance between artistic and pedagogical demands, and the needs of the community.
Besides that, it showed that the process of building community music activities is effective
when all sides participate equally in the communication. Thus, students and teachers act as
reflective practitioners, using all the knowledge and skills they got from their initial study
field, as well as competences needed for the interdisciplinary work, flexibility and
openness to learn ‘on the spot’ (generic competences).
As it can be seen from the narrative, the process of creating workshops is very organic and
it requires a lot of mutual listening, reflections, conversations and improvisation,
especially when there aren’t many rehearsals possible before the workshop. During the
process, with each new story students opened themselves more and more towards all the
forms of interdisciplinary work and all audiences, we got as a challenge. While observing
their progress, I listed what students get from participation in the program Notes of Love:
a) meaningful musical engagement and transformative musical experiences;
b) a chance for the creative artistic expression;
c) empowerment, motivation, inspiration;
d) collaborative teaching and learning (teacher-facilitator and students from
different study courses are in the same position; there is no hierarchy);
e) working with children with special needs (not included in the regular
curriculum);
f) interdisciplinary work (music, literature, drama, dance, etc.);
g) developing practice in different contexts;
h) searching for new audiences;
i) learning how to make creative projects;
j) developing their competences through the education offered from an NGO (for
example, reading workshops with actors, movement workshops, etc.);
k) volunteering practice and service-based learning;
l) safe, positive and nurturing environments;
m) research and sharing amongst the students from other universities (we had some
guests during the process, but they couldn’t stay long because of the complexity
of schedules of all members).
Not only students benefit from the development of community music activities at the
academy. Besides all competencies listed above, as their teacher who fully participated in
the program, I got the chance to expand their horizons, giving them an opportunity to
practice with various audiences. Besides that, I had a chance to develop teamwork and get
lifelong learning in diverse fields: music, art, literature, pedagogy, organization and
leadership, community work, reflective practice, etc.
In the artistic and pedagogical sense, it was interesting to observe during the process of
how each of the musicians brings something new into the story. During two and a half
years of the program, we managed to ‘raise’ four students who participated in almost
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every workshop and who will graduate very soon – hopefully, sharing this idea in their
communities. The stories we did deserve much more performances and workshops to keep
them ‘alive’. Each new workshop and rehearsal makes a significant work on the quality of
performance, both in musical and in acting way. Since acting and speech itself is
something unfamiliar to most musicians, thinking about further work on that might be a
significant step to quality enhancement.
Challenges that always happen in the extracurricular activities with no grades are
numerous, but it doesn’t mean it can stop the realization of the initial idea. For example, in
the service- learning/volunteer work,9 there is always a question of motivation of students,
as well as finding the time and adjusting schedules for workshops and rehearsals that fits
everybody. The schedule is the reason why most students who want to join the program
have to quit at the beginning because the rehearsals can’t be fixed in the initial schedule of
the university. Also, in some attempts to mix people from the NGO with the students from
the Academy, we had a similar problem. Another thing we noticed as extremely useful for
all the students and teachers who join in the future is a database of stories that we make
since the very beginning because each story deserves a ‘proper life’ and a chance to be
performed numerous times. Besides that, the process of reviving the old story is much
easier and faster than going from the very beginning.
Conclusion
As a general conclusion of the paper, I would like to encourage all university teachers who
would like to start community music activities with their students, with several practical
advice:
a) start with simple action and enthusiasm;
b) always plan and reflect;
c) planning is great, but prepare students to be flexible and able to improvise;
d) it is an organic process, so go step by step (and build each level slowly);
e) connect the same workshop (story) in different contexts (in the pedagogical
sense, so that students can see how to adapt the same material with various
audiences);
f) as a university teacher, be part of the process (facilitator, not just an observer);
g) through the program prepare your students for all aspects of community music
programs (organization, artistic work, follow-up activities, different audiences,
etc.);
h) make a network of experts from various fields, institutions, NGOs and students
(sharing knowledge and experiences as critical friends);
i) with each new workshop explore something new;
j) find financial resources for workshop materials and instruments.
Besides these suggestions, I would like to encourage university teachers to develop more
interdisciplinary programs in the community and follow the process with some of the
practice-based research methods in order to maintain the quality of the program and share
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9 Although in the theoretical part there is a clear distinction between service-learning and volunteering, in
the research part of the paper the term ‘volunteering’ is used just because we get volunteer hours for the
workshops, as well as that we use that term in our everyday communication.
the knowledge with the colleagues. For the further research of the community music
program Notes of Love I would explore more topics of group dynamics, power dynamics
and collaborative learning. In an artistic and pedagogical sense, it would be interesting to
start working with children who can see, but who will be asked to be blindfolded at least at
some short parts of the performance, to see how their visually impaired colleagues
approach the story. Of course, it would be great to go deeper into the relationship between
text and music, as well as finding some new musical solutions to various scenes. Hope that
in the future the Academy will recognize the need for stepping out from its comfort zone
into the new experiences in the community, as well as the need for conducting research
connected to the community.
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Povzetek
Cikel interdisciplinarnih pedagoških delavnic Note ljubavi (Note ljubezni) povezuje
literaturo in glasbo prek branja ‘zveneèih’ zgodb, opremljenih z vkljuèenimi razliènimi
glasbenimi dejavnostmi. Program se izvaja kot obštudijska glasbena dejavnost Akademije
za glasbo Univerze v Zagrebu v sodelovanju z nevladno organizacijo Nasmeh za vse, ki
spodbuja kulturo branja v otroških bolnišnicah. Izvaja se veèinoma v zagrebških mestnih
knjinicah. Namenjen je predvsem uèencem Centra za izobraevanje slabovidnih otrok
Vinko Bek. Program je zasnovan tako, da širi ljubezen do glasbene in bralne kulture med
tistimi drubenimi skupinami, ki nimajo dostopa do tovrstnih kulturnih vsebin. Prav tako
je namenjen študentom in zanje predstavlja prilonost za interdisciplinarno
glasbenopedagoško delo, koristno za lokalno skupnost. Od zaèetka izvajanja programa v
študijskem letu 2017/2018 do danes je bilo organiziranih in izvedenih dvajset delavnic.
Pri njihovi izvedbi so sodelovali študenti oddelkov za glasbeno pedagogiko,
muzikologijo, glasbeno teorijo, instrumentalno in klasièno petje. Prispevek predstavlja
a/r/tografsko raziskavo, izvedeno v èasu razvoja programa, katere namen je bil izboljšati
razvoj kompetenc uèencev in uèiteljev skozi procese in postopke pripravljanja in izvedbe
naèrtovanih dejavnosti.
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