Abstract
This article considers the processes of musical learning that take place across formal, non-formal and informal contexts and spaces. Building on notions of embodied knowledge, identity and culture within education studies, specifically the concept of ‘musical habitus’, this article explores processes of access, inclusion and appropriation of music learning environments. Based on focus group discussions with a diverse group of young Londoners (aged 16–25 years) taking part in Wired4Music, a publicly funded youth leadership programme, the article considers definitions and the significance of music and learning places to these emerging musicians. This includes the processes through which musical learning takes place and the relevant factors that contribute to productive learning. Often operating within a context of subsidised arts provision, these perspectives are also considered within the current cultural policy landscape in England. Participants described implicit and explicit processes of exclusion to some formal music education settings and approaches, whereby a less formal though still intentional approach to learning was enacted in response. This included re-appropriating spaces and creating music in communities of practice, embracing multi-modal approaches to learning across art forms and genres and self-directing learning opportunities. These findings strongly resonate with studies which have critically appraised the specific sites and spaces where education takes place, as well as those suggesting that theories of identity, taste and cultural consumption should also be considered in education praxis, whether formal, non-formal or informal.
Keywords
Introduction
Young people’s experiences of learning music cannot be adequately accounted for through the influence of formal music education alone. While the influence of music lessons in school, or in formal training through graded accreditation, is significant in developing certain types of musician within specific forms of music, the opportunities are not always aligned with the musical interests or learning styles of young people across a full range of sites. 1 Moreover, the core sites of musical learning cannot be reduced to the designated and sanctioned spaces of formal music education. Informal, everyday spaces often constitute opportunities for musical encounters, rehearsal and performance in the development of musical awareness, aptitude and expression. 2 Such experiences can begin early on in life, within family, domestic and otherwise mundane settings. Sometimes, they occur through participation in non-formal, funded provision of musical opportunities in youth centres, clubs and halls, musical studios and so on. In many cases, these musical learning spheres are overlapping and constituted as musical journeys, biographies or trajectories, by the varying influences of a number of elements and experiences over time and across space.
In this article, we want to develop an empirical examination of young people’s experiences of ‘musical places’ and, by drawing accounts of these experiences together, consider how such places might be comprised through specific forms of musical learning that young people pursue. Accounts of learning music in site-specific terms are examined here alongside young people’s understandings of the broader cultural landscapes of musical provision within which their learning takes place. We aim therefore to contribute to this themed issue on the cultural geographies of education in three main ways.
First, we seek to encourage openness to what might be understood as musical places in the hope of being receptive to geographies that extend beyond formal educational spaces (i.e. learning outside the classroom). The senses of place articulated in these accounts are fluid, unfolding and interconnected, but also expressed through distinct points of coalescence, and through specific sites and spaces where musical encounters become concentrated.
Second, we hope to use insights from the field of ‘non-formal music education’ to focus on the processes of learning, and particularly where established notions of ‘formal’, ‘informal’ and ‘non-formal’ learning might interrelate. The ‘formality’ of the learning experience is considered as being produced through spatio-temporal relationships between various embodied actors and roles, and between affective and material conditions. 3 We centre our analysis here in terms that explicitly consider what Rimmer has described as a ‘musical habitus’, 4 showing how the young people in this study articulate a mode of learning to be a musician, often in contrast to the limitations of what they understand from being taught music.
Third, we seek to ‘scale-up’ our detailed focus on a small group of young people’s musical learning in ways that connect with wider dynamics of cultural provision and policy relating to the non-formal music education sector at a national scale. Our hope is to develop these insights into a broader conception of the field of musical learning and education in explicitly cultural terms. In particular, we seek to situate our findings within debates in cultural policy around governance structures and institutional aims of national bodies that shape music education provision beyond the formal influences of the Department for Education (DfE), The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Arts Council England (ACE). This approach is important because it presents accounts of young people’s experiences of musical places and musical learning in the context of cultural and educational policy imperatives that seek to define the spheres within which these processes occur.
As such, our contribution builds on the intersections between the role of embodied creative practice for the production of knowledge within cultural geography; renewed critical interest in the lives of children and young people, especially within what is being termed a ‘new geography of education’; and debates within cultural policy studies on the political ideologies that underpin arts and other creative interventions with young people.
This article takes up the task of exploring young people’s musical experiences by outlining findings from a series of focus groups undertaken with participants (aged 16–25 years) in ‘Wired4Music’, a youth leadership programme run by ‘Sound Connections’ based in East London. 5
Place, culture and young people’s music
Previous research has demonstrated how young people participating in ‘out of school’ music projects co-produce spaces of mutual recognition and develop emotional literacies and musical expressions within otherwise non-descript contexts such as social clubs and halls in their neighbourhoods. In many ways, these contexts become ‘musical places’ by being re-purposed through the ways the young people are enabled to construct relationships with each other and with music practitioners that are meaningful to them. 6
Mills and McPherson describe how children learn music when they ‘grow up in a culture where music is valued and plentiful’ or in the company of other musicians, and in a way that ‘[t]here is tuition, of a kind, involved, but it is not necessarily the sort that must take children out of their culture in order to give them trumpet lessons in a distant studio, or piano lessons in their school’. 7
Rimmer discusses the significance of primary and secondary socialisation in music learning, as well as how self-direction and agency are important for young learners to develop their musical understanding. Importantly, Rimmer extends Bourdieu’s social theory of ‘habitus’, by arguing that an individuals’ ‘musical habitus’ is both produced by and produces their musical behaviour and the locations in which it is played out. He proposes that individuals both evaluate and classify their own and each other’s musical tastes and behaviours according to their musical habitus and that it constructs modes of ‘apprehension, appreciation and discernment’ between social actors. 8 In extending arguments of cultural participation and legitimacy beyond methodologically and theoretically narrow concepts of ‘taste’, Rimmer usefully presents the opportunity to explore issues of identity, action and embodiment together in how musical cultures are lived and learned.
Geographies of education and learning (music)
Within geography, an emerging agenda around new geographies of education and learning has begun to develop, in which school boundaries are critically questioned and situated within their wider communities, 9 ‘outward looking’ approaches that view educational contexts as linked to wider social processes are advocated, 10 and appeals for those people experiencing education as subjects to be explored within critical analysis. 11 This agenda within geography is paralleled to some extent by a recent spatial turn in education studies. 12 Both debates speak with clarity around distinctions between ‘education’, as something that is primarily state initiated and regulated, based on student–teacher relationships and taking place in spaces dedicated for such purposes; and ‘learning’ as something that is on-going, informal and closer to European understandings of ‘Social Pedagogy’, 13 occurring through more everyday and less intentional contexts.
Kraftl, for example, has pioneered a compelling case for considering the geographies of ‘alternative’ education as an ‘opportunity for critical reflection upon assumptions about learning that pervade in mainstream educational systems’, 14 and therefore enabling researchers to ‘better apprehend the complexities of how education takes place, how learning is practiced, idealised and talked about’. 15
In education research, Morgan makes the case that pedagogy can no longer be understood within the realm of school alone, or in the relationships between students and teachers, and is instead seen to occur across a range of ‘cultural sites’. 16 Building from his observation that popular culture, consumption practices and media engagement increasingly inform young people’s agency in the construction of meaning and identity, he takes up the task of developing a ‘cultural pedagogy’ capable of accounting for the geographies of everyday life. Despite redirecting this consideration back at geography educators and the classrooms they occupy, Morgan nonetheless encourages more critical attention on the culturally inflected forms of learning that occur in the spaces beyond formal school contexts. Importantly, such insights indicate a synergy with debates on the merits of high/low culture, with stigmas bound-up in the preferences for formal over informal and non-formal educational approaches.
Various attempts have been made to delineate the features of formal, informal and non-formal music education. Hargreaves, Marshall and North propose a ‘global’ model of music education, including ‘poles’ between formal and informal learning, generalist and specialist provision and statutory and elective participation. 17 In the global model, the distinction made between the formal and informal poles suggests that formal music education tends to be experienced in school, or if outside of school, in professional performance training or private tuition. The informal pole includes ‘extra-curricular music making’, ‘novel’ experiences in school and provision by community and voluntary organisations. In this model, the space occupied by so-called ‘non-formal’ music education appears to include the characteristics of the ‘informal’ pole. However, it is not made clear whether the type of extra-curricular music making delivered by community and voluntary organisations is provided alongside a distinct pedagogical framework, as has been argued elsewhere. 18
Folkestad extends this approach and argues that formal–informal should not be regarded as a dichotomy, but rather a continuum, and that in most music education situations, both aspects are in various degrees present and interacting in the learning process. 19 Folkestad posits that four aspects should be considered when judging the degree to which a learning experience is on the formal–informal spectrum: situation, learning style, ownership and intentionality. In this approach, music education is defined by where the music is learned, how it is learned and taught, who has instigated the process and for what reasons. For Folkestad, there are a range of practices, approaches and intentions at play in most music learning contexts, explicitly asserting the fluid nature of formal–informal pedagogies rather than advocating a sharp distinction between them.
Andrews compared teacher-directed and group-led forms of musical learning with primary aged children and found that while both could be effective, the most productive forms of autonomous musical learning occurred where teachers took on more informal, facilitative rather than directive roles. 20 Green posits that successful engagement and learning outcomes for music students can be achieved by adopting the same practices employed by popular musicians, many of whom learned through listening and replicating sounds and music autonomously and in small groups. 21 Green’s theory has been turned into a national teaching initiative in the United Kingdom, ‘Musical Futures’, funded since 2003 to support teachers to encourage more informal learning approaches in the classroom. A longitudinal evaluation has shown the approach has been successful at engaging more pupils in music learning, expanding repertoire provided in schools and encouraging pupils to continue with music learning beyond the compulsory stage. 22 Hallam et al. also report that the initiative is being used by an increasing number of schools and gaining interest and adoption internationally. These examples serve to illustrate the diverse approaches currently being applied across music learning contexts and highlight the centrality of pedagogy, alongside space, when considering degrees of formality within, and across, learning spheres.
Similarly to Folkestad, in a review of pervading concepts of formal, non-formal and informal learning, Colley et al. highlight how definitional separation is less useful than an engagement with the specific contexts in which the learning takes place, including a consideration of pedagogy, space and the broader socio-political contexts of ‘participation’. 23 Beckerman et al. have also explored the diversions and agreements between concepts of non-formal education and how it is experienced across the life-course, in international settings and across settings. 24 Both sets of authors conclude that the vast majority of learning experiences contain formal and informal elements, and that most educators are aware of a range of processes at play within their practice.
Cultural policy and non-formal music education
Placing policy at the heart of our consideration of young people’s experiences and perceptions also addresses what Ansell identifies as the limitations of micro-geographical and localised thinking within children’s geographies. 25 Her suggestion of pursuing a ‘flat ontology’, whereby sociospatiality is understood in more material and non-hierarchical terms, is taken up in our methodological approach detailed below, informing the ways we have sought young people’s sense of the broader landscapes of cultural policy and provision within which they might act.
Considering cultural experiences outside of school, the majority of public funding for cultural participation opportunities in England, whether as a consumer or a producer, is mediated nationally through ACE and through Local Authorities (i.e. local government). Budgets and policy imperatives for both sources of funding are themselves co-ordinated by central Government departments (the DCMS, and the Department for Communities and Local Government respectively). It has been suggested that this politicises the cultural landscape, funding priorities and decisions, and the aims and activities and opportunities provided by arts and cultural organisations. 26
The policy landscape is presented here because the young people taking part in this study have participated in public and privately funded arts and music education across both formal and non-formal spheres. Due to their participation in the ‘Wired4Music’ programme, they are aware of some of the funding and policy structures that enable or restrict these opportunities. This suggests a level of critical awareness of the machinations of arts and music policy that are less likely to be present among a sample more representative of the general youth population.
Research approach
In other work to date, we have pursued research with young people informed by an explicit politics of voice, listening and recognition – building on an emerging agenda in cultural geography which prioritises accounts of how children and young people ‘see’ the world around them, 27 with efforts to foreground listening to young people and valuing what they say. Equally, our approach was informed by participatory methods and action research practice, where identifiable benefits for both individual participants and wider communities might be achieved. 28
Wired4Music is a youth leadership programme, whereby the participating group of young people have developed their own ‘music manifesto’, 29 and seek to offer their perspectives and represent those of their peers to London-wide music providers, and at a national level to organisations like Youth Music. For this study, 17 young people took part in a 3-hour discussion session, split across two focus groups, each facilitated by the authors.
Participants provided informed consent and indicated the levels of anonymity they wished to be applied to their contributions. As is generally the case in qualitative research, no attempt was made to recruit a sample representative of contemporary young people in London or the United Kingdom. Instead, a self-selecting sample of young people participated after being given the opportunity through their involvement in the Wired4Music programme. The discussions took place in the early evening in the Youth Music offices in Central London and participation was elective and voluntary for those participating in the programme (around 40 young people in total), refreshments were provided and travel expenses paid for. Transcripts of the focus groups were iteratively coded using computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (NVivo).
Each focus group used a topic guide to consider three key questions: ‘What are the factors that you consider to make a place musical?’ ‘What are the relationships and environmental elements that have contributed to your musical learning?’ and ‘What are your experiences of policy, funding and “provision” in the development of your own musical learning’? Participants’ accounts were analysed according to the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis 30 which seeks to highlight the participant’s own interpretation of phenomena while acknowledging the interpretative role of the researcher(s) in establishing agreed ‘truths’. 31
The participants represented a wide range of musical genres, roles, experiences, socio-economic backgrounds and geographical origins within London. While London has a unique and well-established cultural offer which allows for exploration of a broad range of cultural experiences, it could also be argued that the specificity of the cultural infrastructure in London limits the extent to which these experiences may be shared in other contexts and settings. A key intention of this study was to explore how cultural policy is enacted and interpreted in a local context; therefore, the specificity of the London setting for the current study is less relevant than how young people perceive and understand their learning journeys and the cultural milieus in which they take place. It should be noted however that these young people were engaged in a voluntary programme that sought to elicit and explore their views on a regular basis; it is therefore likely that these young people took part because they wanted to be heard and the views and experiences of another sample would provide a different account. The themes and excerpts presented below are not intended to be the universal experiences of a youth population, but to represent points of convergence and divergence across the 17 people and 2 concurrent groups taking part in this research exercise.
Becoming musicians: young people’s experiences of musical learning across formal, non-formal and informal spheres
Access and entitlement to learning environments
Participants described a number of barriers to their musical learning, ranging from being physically barred from musical spaces, to being explicitly told that the music learning on offer was not ‘for them’. In addition, there was a widely held perception that formal music education was something that people should expect to pay for, and was additional to core skills and curricula regarded as a greater policy priority.
One of the strongest perceptions was that the ‘formal’ offer made to these participants did not meet their needs, although their very involvement in the Wired4Music programme in the first instance may also indicate a lack of satisfaction with the music education they had experienced to date. Some participants described how they were not allowed to access spaces and were told that they were not the types of learners who should be supported in music education over and above the basic curriculum: 32
When I did music back in school it was really, really different like, we weren’t allowed to be in the class by ourselves [laughing] we had to work in a group, everyone just banged on xylophones and played keyboards and it was just so distracting and I couldn’t even focus on what I was doing because the teacher would be like, ‘OK look you’re going to learn this key’, like I could understand it but then he would go ‘Right now everybody play’, you know what I mean, you’re not going to hear what you are trying to do on the keyboard.
I think like for me personally all of the experience had to be back in school, because I remember like in year eight or year nine when we were still on the xylophones right and we were not allowed to progress and use other instruments, like me I’ve got a passion for playing keyboard and I want to continue and get better at it but if they’re telling us ‘Look for this term you’re going to be studying the xylophone’, and you do not want to play xylophone it’s not going to help you at all, because that’s what makes the students to just do otherwise and not like pay attention or anything, because they want to study something else but you’re not giving them the option though, you’re not telling them ‘Look you can either pick from this or this or this’, and I remember they had another room that had old instruments in it, and they had like trumpets and all of this and whenever we’d go in there, we’d go in there with a teacher but they wouldn’t let us on our own, seeing as they would probably think we was gonna take something or whatever, like there was certain instruments that weren’t allowed to us and we could not touch them and they made that very clear which was a bit like ‘wow, so were stuck on xylophone!’ do you know what I mean?
Yeah erm, I taught myself everything that was really important, and like I don’t know if this is for other musicians but I didn’t get a lot of support in terms of erm, they were allocating certain spaces in my school to music tuition so once they gave it out there wasn’t enough for everyone, so I had to teach myself everything, I didn’t receive formal training but I taught myself how to read music and to produce.
Participants described how they were not allowed to access certain spaces and opportunities, despite attempts to engage in learning that was more appealing to their emerging musical interests. The options that were made available were limited and participants described how they were left to negotiate their own learning journeys, apart from formal support. In the participants’ accounts, there appeared to be processes of exclusion based on the normative ideas of the music educators they encountered and limited perceived attempts to connect to their identities as learners.
In addition to being physically restricted from spaces, and judged inappropriately suited to certain opportunities, participants also described a mode of stratification, not just on perceived (or assessed) musical ability, but on their musical identities. 33 This was not described as necessarily inhibiting development, but was seen as significant to their own learning biographies and the extent to which they were self-directed:
I was in the music lessons doing guitars and piano, I was really good at both but I didn’t want to do it, every time they told me to write my instrument I kept on writing ‘microphone’ to be cheeky, I was like ‘give me a mic and that’s my instrument, I’ll use my voice, my vocals as the music’.
How did that go down?
Smiles and frowns, some of the teachers loved it, like ‘oh he’s thinking out of the box’, other people were like ‘You cheeky bugger, just put your instrument’ kind of thing.
I would go to touch the piano and our teacher would be like ‘No no no no no, don’t touch it, it’s for me’, I mean, that’s a bit, I mean, yeah you do have to respect the teachers stuff and what not, but if you were being restricted from playing the instrument that you want to play then there is no way we are going to progress on one xylophone.
These normative expectations of who is ‘allowed’ music education were present not only in the actions of the educators but also in the perspectives of the participants themselves, demonstrating the perpetuation of accepted dominant modes of access to formal education:
I think there is kind of restrictions to the person, if you’re a troublemaker then obviously you’re going to have that persona about you and the teachers are going to know like ‘You’re a trouble maker, we’re going to stop you from doing this because you’re not taking it seriously’.
Participants described how they were aware of the stratification taking place at various stages of their learning journeys and how options were or were not made available to them based on their perceived abilities, interests and identities. However, rather than discouraging participants from musical participation, this was discussed as motivating them to seek musical learning elsewhere and complement, or where necessary replace, the scope and extent of the formal offer.
Appropriate and appropriating musical environments
When asked to describe the places they first associated with their musicality, participants described their childhood homes and early domestic scenes. Family cultures were seen to be an early catalyst for the participants’ interest in and motivation for learning about music, although there was little description of explicit music education or tuition from parents or siblings:
Well my Dad was always the one that would give me records and stuff, like I would come home and there would be a new CD or tape on the table and he’d be like ‘Just give this a listen’, and I was probably about Nine or Ten and he gave me Madness and I remember listening to it and going what the hell is that thing that is making that noise, and he was like ‘Saxophone’, and I was like ‘I have to play it, I have to learn that instrument!’
Whenever I was at home rather than running around, I would be in the house just listening to the radio literally I’d sit in front of the radio like I was meditating like, I see pictures in old family albums and I’m like there, look at a few pictures down, it’s night time and I’m still there, I’m like how long was I doing that?
[I was] born in Uganda I came here when I was like five, but in Uganda there was always the Sunday, yeah Sunday was the musical day for me, this big dinner, family comes over, music was just running until late.
Rather than situating their early musical experiences in places relating to tuition or performance, participants described the influence of broader musical environments wrapped up in everyday cultures and milieus. This domestic exposure was linked to the development of a musical and learning identity that participants felt they would later foster across different settings and learning ‘spheres’.
Participants also described domestic spaces as being essential to their learning and development as more established musicians and when they were explicitly learning music. These descriptions did not allude to a formal use of space, structured around clear learning objectives, but neither was the use of the domestic space for learning accidental or wholly unintentional:
it was great because there was this network of musicians and so like one of their boyfriends was a gigging guitarist in and out of London so we’d come down in the morning and they’d be these instruments in the living room and one time there was this Cajone just sat in the living room and we were like what is it?
Is that the square box you bang?
Yeah, but of course we had never seen a Cajone in real life, so my housemates they were like, ‘Do we hit it?’, ‘What do we do with it?’, we ended up like getting out all of the instruments and just being like children and playing with them.
I’ve been really fortunate, I took a year out and that one year was the first time that I had no performance space or rehearsal space, so I used to sort of like schedule the time with my neighbours, these two hours a day I am going to be making a lot of noise.
I sincerely support house studio’s I think as a musician or an artist it’s an essential part [of your development], there’s really good albums that are out there today that came from a house set up, and it’s a thing where you become comfortable with yourself, you find out all your strengths, you work on your weaknesses, you are forced to because you ain’t got no one else.
Reflecting on their development as musicians, participants could identify clear learning opportunities that occurred in the domestic spaces and settings they found themselves in. This re-appropriation of domestic spaces (i.e. for activities other than recreation or ‘living’) indicates how both self-directed and facilitated learning can be intentionally engaged in for individual exploration and development in everyday ways. 34
Similarly, as domestic and more informal spaces were explicitly used to facilitate learning, spaces perceived to be more formal by participants (i.e. school and college) were re-purposed into more informal learning spaces which entailed greater individual ownership and autonomy:
in our school we did have a studio there too, and that’s where I kind of gained more bulkiness, like I used to go to the studio like even school hours, lunch time or after school or go there every now and then and it would be either just me on my own, or other people that love working in there, not making loads of noise, because in the studio we would have like these headphones on and you can listen to your own music without distracting the person next to you, so in that way I learned to produce and be like self-aware and stuff without being distracted or anything.
I think when I was in college we had a room [ . . . ] We had the room code, so after school we’d just go there some people would be on YouTube just listening to music, some people playing the piano, we made the room ours like, ‘oh this is our music room, no one can mess with us!’ and because we were just the people in performing arts we’d just go in there when the teacher’s in her office and we’d just make music, write and everything, Because the real music room with the studio and everything was for the music students and the music students were quite, ‘No, this is our room you lot go into the theatre or something!’ [group laughing]. It was just like a good vibe and it just brings back to the point that the people make the room, the people makes the space, the space doesn’t make the person.
In school we used to actually bang on the bins [ . . . ] and we’d all start African drumming, and these drummers would really star doing real patterns off bins, like we’d get one from the other corner and bring it here and then the caretaker would be like ‘Who moved the bins?’ but we’d move the bins and start doing real patterns off that.
Acting within the confines of the formal education spaces they were allowed to occupy, participants described how they would renegotiate the opportunities that existed within the space as an active and intentional mode of learning. This may have been through surreptitious (or consensual) use of music spaces, or through improvising with the instruments and equipment they could access. The repeated manner in which participants ‘made do’ with the spaces they could access highlights how they re-appropriated learning spaces to meet their individual needs. Within these acts, it could be argued that participants were ‘deformalising’ spaces and environments, using space in a formal environment for non-formal learning. This highlights conscious acts of non-formal learning as opposed to purely informal learning where there is less intentionality (i.e. the difference between using a space to learn music and using a space to ‘jam’, despite what the space was intended for). In environments where the opportunity to learn music was not made formally available to the participants, they renegotiated the opportunities to make and learn music according to their individual learning identities, trajectories and habitus.
Types of learning: go your own way
Participants identified that most of their musical learning had taken place outside of formal spaces and curricula. Indeed, rather than purely informal learning, the ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) attitude referred more to participants seeking out and engaging in cultural opportunities they had identified, as well as being signposted to learning opportunities by friends and peers. In addition, participants indicated that they did not feel wholly excluded by their discouragement from certain formal spaces or opportunities, instead that they could navigate and negotiate ‘spheres’ of informal, non-formal and formal learning, most often describing situations where they would ‘mix’ their educational progression across diverse combinations of opportunities and styles of music:
I had to do a very different approach it was very lo-fi, DIY DIY DIY, just go and buy this really bad Karaoke mic that had no, it didn’t even have plugs, it just had like a little thing you plug it in so you could have used that as like a voice type of microphone for talking on a web-cam, and I’m using that to record and I’ve got Adobe Audition, not no Logic nothing, and I’m mixing down like this, and I came up with like three good mix tapes from it, so it was just like by the time I’d finish it got to the point where certain people are coming to me and saying ‘Oh I want to record at your house’.
I’m the type of person, I was like ‘nah I want to learn this, come on let’s smash it’, so I started learning in school how to play drums, I think in primary school and then I was learning it on the side when he [participant’s brother] goes out, I would jump on the drums and I got better and better and then one day I think his friends came round and then he used be with a lot of drummers, so they all had a competition and they were like playing and I was thinking let me see what I can do, so I just went on and I was just playing and then I did something which I wasn’t meant to do like double step on the kick, and I kept doing it and then he tries it but he does ‘dum-dum-music-gap’, but I was like, ‘dadum dadum’. He was like ‘How are you doing this?’ I was like I don’t know, and since from then it’s just like I just kept developing a lot better in drumming.
Participants described an approach to self-directed learning that imbued a ‘do it yourself’ attitude, recognising how to adapt tools, environments and opportunities to meet their learning needs. However, this was not reported as less desirable than other opportunities, more likely that the individual approaches they had to their craft required them to bend the ‘learning rules’. Specific ‘communities of practice’ 35 also had a role in facilitating learning, as participants described the significance of peers, as well as the explicit function of peer-supported learning, in their biographies:
I had a friend called Davo, and he used to be the main guy that used to bring the Nokia phone that had the beats on it, [group laughing] so if you are gonna rap, or gonna spit your bars, if Davo’s not in the circle then you’re not doing nothing, so Davo had to be in the circle at all times, and then he started spitting and he had a good friend of his called Smirka, and they used to be like the tag team [ . . . ] when they did that they had already influenced enough people in the circle to start now doing music, because of them two.
it just kind of makes me realise that when I am helping others or when I am teaching them how to do these things, song writing for example, because they was taught to me and now I am teaching others, not only am I teaching them to a certain extent I am still teaching myself when I do it, because I am having to do what I love doing best, challenge myself, I have to put myself in their shoes [ . . . ] so that for me is like one of the best bits of the whole teaching and learning process really.
In the accounts relating to peer-learning, it became clear that physical environments and specific learning times were less significant than the presence of specific individuals and processes of reciprocal learning. The ‘DIY’ attitude described in the above section extended to working with others, innovating and improvising in everyday contexts and operating outside of formalised opportunities for ensemble or group learning. In this way, participants described greater autonomy and ownership of the learning process and its outcomes.
This autonomy extended to perceived differences between learning spaces and musical styles. Participants described a ‘pick n mix’ approach to the opportunities they encountered, where there was little discrimination between what may be considered formal, non-formal or informal education, as well as between art forms. Indeed, the lack of self-perceived difference between learning spheres and genres was described by many participants as providing a richer landscape across which they could progress their music making:
I learned from like spoken word events and stuff, and poetry that I really had a thing for things like that and I want to go to the place where they play Jazz and I think that you can learn, you know music is not just singing, it’s not just rapping, there’s just so many different ways you can express words in just so many different ways, and I think if there was a place, an imaginary place where they did have open mics and acoustic sessions and poetry sessions and spoken word, I think a person who only listens to rap would probably sit there and be like ‘You know what, this is beautiful and this is something different and wow I know how to . . .’, I think in order to sing there is a way you have to like, you can’t just sing, people have to understand what you’re saying, so for instance someone doing poetry they could teach you how to put your words out, you know, with the right breath in the right tone, and I think you can learn that from different ways off different kinds of performers, I think people don’t really realise that.
I got to secondary school and I joined like this local steel band group and everyone in my secondary school was like, ‘They are gonna make you fail your exams, don’t join them, blah blah blah’, and I’m like I can do it, and I joined them and then through them I was kind of the person that if I want something to happen it happens [ . . . ] so through that I started like playing more drums, trying to learn the keyboard. Then I got into the studio, and then I was that type of person on the tech, I just like Logic, I play instruments, join in and play drums and then from there it moved onto cinematography, like video stuff. But that clashed with music because a lot of music I used to hear I used to kind of do videos for them so if it’s like rap, if I used to listen to rap, I was stuck on rap, I would do a lot of rap videos, but there was a time when I was jumping from genre to genre.
Participants described how they did not feel as if their music education was confined to one instrument, genre or learning style. Instead, participants described how learning about creativity more broadly informed their musical identities and development in holistic ways. The ‘spheres’ in which explicit and intentional learning took place were not limited to in-school or out-of-school settings in participant descriptions. In making sense of their own learning trajectories, participants could readily describe how factors other than ‘music education’ were significant in their musical development. In these descriptions, participants highlighted how they felt able to direct their learning in a way that met their emerging needs, importantly, across all opportunities they could identify and access (i.e. not discriminating based on the type of opportunity).
Conclusion
The findings presented above suggest a number of ways in which young learners perceive musical spaces and places, most of which have little to do with what could conventionally be considered the ‘music classroom’.
Participants perceived a clear code of access and processes of exclusion around some formal music education spaces and opportunities. In some cases because the formal spaces in school or college did not have the facilities, and in others because they were literally not allowed to use the instruments or to take ownership of their learning trajectories. Domestic spaces, both in childhood and beyond, have provided spheres of exploration and identity development for these young musicians and in some cases involved intentional learning. Participants perceived that often the ‘formality’ of a space (whether domestic or educational) did not present a barrier and, in fact, encouraged stronger creative development through the repurposing of that space or environment to meet their learning needs and intentions. This extended to the development of ‘communities of practice’ and peer-negotiated learning approaches that were adapted and adaptable across genres, styles, instruments, sites and spaces. This self-directed aspect of the young musicians learning trajectories was also described as adding value precisely because it was multi-modal and developed outside the confines of a tightly bound curriculum. This suggests that issues of space and learner identity should be considered alongside pedagogy within discussion and development of in-school and out-of-school music education policy.
The musical places described by these participants are those which enable them to be creative and to enact and develop their musical identities using cultural artefacts and opportunities that exist in their milieus regardless of the physical setting. This echoes arguments already put forward by Morgan regarding the significance of cultural pedagogy, 36 although we would suggest that less of a distinction is made by the participants in this study between formal/non-formal settings, and, indeed, between any associated pedagogical approaches. Our study of young musicians in the city here has clear parallels with Kraftl’s discussion of home-schooling and the negotiated values placed on different spheres of learning or, as he suggests, ‘the idea that the banal materialities and disorderly mess of everyday environments are suffused with learning potential’. 37
The enactment of musical learning perceived by the participants has strong parallels with Rimmer’s concept of ‘musical habitus’, as well as his suggestion that some degree of agency must be afforded to young learners regardless of the setting in which that learning takes place. The sense of ownership, belonging and becoming described by the participants also sits in productive tension with current policy imperatives that do not explicitly ascribe to the position that inclusive, diverse, non-discriminatory practice will likely support the broadest range of young musicians. Current UK education policy instead seeks to provide ‘access’ to a relatively narrow model of music education to all children and young people, with a much smaller number being recognised as having the talent to progress to ‘excellence’ along traditional orchestral routes. 38 The embodied knowledge that is the product of young people learning in and through their ‘musical habitus’ is itself political, as it challenges accepted hierarchies of cultural participation and progression, specifically who can learn what and where. The sites of exclusion described by the participants, whether cultural or educational, must continue to be critically reviewed at all levels.
What makes a place musical for these young learners is the extent to which they can access it, claim ownership of it, enact their musical identities, explore other art forms and types of music and be supported by those with a shared interest, within it. While explicit reference to formal/informal/non-formal pedagogies or settings did not feature in the descriptions of their learning journeys to date, these participants clearly identified processes of exclusion and opportunity based on their own and others’ ‘musical habitus’. Extending this concept among a diverse group of young musicians through a study explicitly exploring their sense of place provides an opportunity to reconsider prevailing theory about educational access, and the opportunity to explore it across disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. It also suggests that a broader consideration of how cultural identities and behaviours can affect educational praxis should remain, or indeed become, a priority for those seeking to understand, legislate for, or fund such opportunities.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.