The space to create

Through a recent project with Music and the Deaf, composer Andrew Smith and singer Jeff Borradaile worked with children to help develop their creativity. Here, they explain their process and share some helpful tips

As teachers and practitioners working with young people, it’s our duty to enrich every part of their lives. With our guidance, these young people are undergoing their most important part of personality formation. To assist in this, it’s our role to value, nurture and develop their ideas as opposed to them merely copying ours. This means that a ‘creative classroom’ is a must.

During a recent project with Music and the Deaf (MatD),

we found creativity in abundance among those we worked with. Over four months, deaf young people across West Lancashire learned how to express themselves using their voice; how to compose new songs and how to showcase their ideas through live performance. Throughout this MatD-Sign Up project, we worked openly to develop the children’s creativity in addition to their musical skills.

GIVE COMPOSING A SHOT

Unless a practitioner or teacher has a music background, the thought of delivering composition lessons to a class of 30 children can be very daunting! But, you don’t have to be the next Mozart or Beethoven to offer children the opportunity to create new music. You do, however, have to provide an environment that allows for open creativity and nurtures all pupils’ suggestions.

There are no ‘mistakes’ during the process of creating a new piece of music. However, there are sounds and ideas that will be preferred more than others in order to reach a final creative product. In this way, composing is an evolutionary process; meaning that the teacher isn’t able to predetermine exactly what will come out of a session. Throughout the process of creating, it’s important to be open to experimentation.

There are obvious skills and techniques professional composers have, eg. writing musical notation and being able to handle ensembles. However, there are other skills, such as improvisation, that can be learned by young people in schools simply through experimenting with sound. During this process they are becoming composers and creating new music. Ultimately, they are able to express themselves in a more creative way.

ESTABLISH A THEME

Our approach is to not spoon-feed the children but rather have a central theme, story or idea for them to relate to and then allow the children to direct the pace and content of the composition process and eventually the final product.

The final ‘product’ in this project was a performance of a new song cycle based on the theme of King Arthur and Merlin. The children composed parts of the music, wrote all the lyrics themselves and discovered how to express themselves using their voice and/or using sign language.

Singing and composing music is an incredibly personal experience: a composer attempts to convey his/her emotions to others through sound while a singer uses no instrument other than what they were born with – their voice. In the MatD-Sign Up project the children found their personal and collective voice, through signing, singing or creating music. Therefore they showed immense pride in sharing their product of bringing together singing, signing and composition: it was their work.

The feeling of ownership when you have created something that you then perform, provides a very distinct type of confidence and a validated belief that your ideas and emotions are valued. This is as rich and as compelling as music and ‘creativity’ can get. Affected by a creative teacher, a child can fully develop their creativity. Creative personalities are precious to our society, and teachers should be welcomed to highlight them, starting with releasing and developing your own creativity!

Try this!

Decide upon a central theme, for example ‘winter’. Since cross-curricular projects bear more fruitful results, try other movement or drama games related to the theme allowing the children to enter into the spirit and mood before the music activities begin.

After a few warm-up games (check the Voice Box Area) ask your class to list as many single words as they can to describe what they would hear, see, feel, smell, taste and experience during wintertime. For example:

This begins the literacy element of this activity.

Ask the children to look for instruments or objects in the room that could sound like or represent one of the above words. For example, a chime bar could imitate ‘bells’ or classroom percussion instruments or any metallic objects will create a ‘cold’ sound. Ask the children to create a very short rhythm with their new sound and together, carefully orchestrate and arrange a structure for these sounds with the class part of the decision-making process.

One idea is to create a circle and begin with one person playing their rhythm. Then add one sound/rhythm on top until everybody is playing. Finally, reverse the direction taking one sound out at a time until you are left with the person who started. The children can take it in turns to conduct by going into the middle of the circle and controlling dynamics (loudness and softness) and structure, for example.

Now that we have our accompaniment, we need to create some lyrics. Refer back to the single words listed earlier. Ask the children to create a 5-, 7- or 9-syllable sentence using as many of the previously listed words as possible in addition to connecting words. For example:

“A glistening blanket of ice cold snow”

“Sounds of singing bells”

“The burning logs flash fire red and gold”.

Once the lyrics have been written, you may wish to compose your own melodies for them or you could add them to other well-known songs the children already know. Put this together with your instrumental accompaniment and you have created a new composition with your class!

Take Note

Music and the Deaf is a Sing Up Flagship, which is also running a national Vocal Force programme, training singers and signers to help deliver work with hearing impaired children across the country. They also developed the ‘Sign Bank’, creating signed song resources to accompany existing Sing Up songs. Their signed songs are available either through the Song Bank advanced search by selecting the Accessibility/SEN tab or on our YouTube channel.