"We had an unreal morning today when my band visited and her students at Hamlyn Banks PS. We workshopped “We’re Going Home” and “Shotgun” together before breaking off into groups and working on it. One of my favourite parts was when the primary students were teaching my big yr12s how to play the marimbas" Scott Mangos, Mount Clear College Ballarat

We think that fun and musical opportunities for students and teachers to work together are really important. Our Musical Futures International online teacher communities are a great way for teachers like Felicity O'Halloran from Hamlyn Banks PS and Performing Arts KLA Leader and Head of Music, Mount Clear College Scott Mangos to bring their students together through music. 

​Musical Futures International Champions Felicity and Scott first connected through Musical Futures Australia and were both part of our Musical Futures International teacher study tour to America in 2017.

We really enjoyed hearing about the visit of a student band from Mount Clear to Hamlyn Banks Primary School today to work with younger students and play some music together and we hope you enjoy the photos and video from the day!

Musical Futures is a student-centred approach to music learning and teaching which originally developed from and is most commonly found in music classrooms in schools across the world.

However in addition to our recent work with instrumental teachers in China, where we have been exploring the relevance of Musical Futures in instrumental learning, in the UK the Disquiet project has also looked outside the classroom. Disquiet explores whether accessible teaching methods, such as Musical Futures: Just Play and instructional YouTube videos, could be adapted to effectively support music sessions for 13-15 year olds. 

The Disquiet pilot project worked with six trainee music leaders aged 16-19 at both Strood Youth Centre and Ideas Test in Sittingbourne in the UK and the two focus areas explored firstly what training might be required for young people to lead workshops with younger peers and whether the current Musical Futures resources originally designed for use by teachers in classrooms would be appropriate in these new settings. 

Disquiet was supported by funding from Youth Music. Kent Music kindly continued to facilitate the project at Ideas Test, Sittingbourne, beyond the funding period. The pilot was managed by SparkedEcho on behalf of Musical Futures UK

A reflective piece written by SparkedEcho Director Kevin Grist can be found here and the full write up is well worth a read for anyone interested in learning more about keeping student choice and voice at the heart of their music program. 

Here at Musical Futures International, we are keen to keep learners/students/young people at the very heart of their music education. The mix of formal and non formal/informal approaches that Musical Futures advocates should always be driven by the needs, wants and existing passions for music of those at the receiving end of their own music education.

We were particularly interested in what the young people had to say about the Musical Futures: Just Play resources and how young people used these in combination other openly-available resources such as those found on Youtube or similar to teach themselves and others. We love the idea of how these were blended to create what Kevin describes as "a youth-led adaptation" of Musical Futures.

There are also some interesting implications for teachers allowing students to incorporate open-source resources into informal learning in terms of the support they might need to find the most useful content to achieve the musical outcomes they set for themselves. Kevin identifies issues with quality, usefulness, licensing and more as potential issues for students to navigate through.

The young people were then able to create their own resources and the videos below are a great example of what they produced themselves in response to some of the challenges they faced. 

It would be great to see the kinds of resources students in our Musical Futures International communities might produce if they were given similar ownership over their learning and invited to pass that learning on through peer to peer music activities both in school or in other settings. 

We would also love to know what students make of the video resources produced by the young people involved in the pilots which can be found below.

Please do read the full write up of the project on the Musical Futures UK website by clicking here and you can leave any comments or feedback at the bottom of this post. 

We are just back from our latest trip to Asia. Thanks so much to everyone who came along and to our host teachers Peter, Vindy, Elise, Luke, Nicki and Sam. It was lovely to catch up with old friends and meet new ones ​and we can't wait to return in January!

We spent a great few days working with Masters and Undergraduate students and meeting and reconnecting with the faculty at the Education University, Hong Kong. We particularly enjoyed filling the lecture hall with music as we made use of ukuleles, ipads, phones and laptops to play and create music as a way to understand Musical Futures approaches and their relevance to both classroom and instrumental teaching and learning. 

Our 2 day Introduction and Recharge workshops were great fun and we enjoyed introducing some new content including a brand new Beyond the Play Along session, new MF Styles and Everyone Can Play resources and a chance to explore MF: Studio, our approach for Music Technology developed in partnership with Soundtrap. Thanks so much to our hosts Peter, Vindy, Elise and staff and students at the school for excellent hospitality and for lending us their teaching spaces and instruments for the weekend!

Our final workshops for 2018 took place at St Joseph's Institution International School, KL and it was lovely to welcome back old friends who had attended previous workshops in KL, Bangkok and Singapore and to meet new teachers from Cambodia, Malaysia and Australia! We loved hearing how teachers have been using Musical Futures International approaches since their first workshops in international and government schools and the impact it has had on their students.

We will be back in Asia in Shanghai and Bangkok in January 2019 and will be announcing new workshop dates and locations soon. Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter to find a workshop near you!