AH: In this podcast, I’m talking with Graeme Smith, who is a research consultant and previously head of music and arts at Croydon Council. He’s also a former chair of Music Mark and a member of the Arts Council of England’s hubs advisory group. Why I thought you’d like to hear from Graeme is his research has been testing how to use a particular impact and progression framework based on wellbeing for learning, as part of the primary school arts curriculum and teacher CPD. So welcome, Graeme. It’s great to meet you, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about this research.
GS: Thank you for having me Anita.
AH: You’re really welcome. I really like the idea that this research is about demonstrating that understanding the human world through artistic processes is as important as understanding the natural world through scientific processes. It really seems to me to fit with how we need to advocate to decision makers about the arts being central to pupils being able to thrive in their lives and their learning. So first of all, can you tell me how you came to carry out this research and to frame it in this way really? Did you have a light bulb moment? Or, if not, what brought you to this point?
GS: Well, I think two things brought me to this point. One is the contribution music making has made to my life. It’s always facilitated close friendships. I struggled with the hierarchical cliques in secondary school. Youth orchestras had none. I had wide ranging musical tastes, including embracing the folk music revival of the 1960s. Storytelling about life in rural England resonated with the village life of my childhood. Then when I married into a family of Polish refugees, I learned that arts and culture is more than reflecting identity. I learned how it’s used to sustain identity in the face of oppression and loss of homes and loved ones, and through my active participation in Polish cultural events, with my violin, I was able to become part of the Polish community. Now the second was a light bulb moment. I attended a presentation from Croydon’s Violence Reduction network. They discussed gangs, drugs and knife crime, police intelligence and the disproportionate effect on the black community. It kept coming back to the key message, the importance of culture and identity for families and young people, and I knew about culture and identity, both for me and the Polish community. I began working with Chris Syrus. He’d used music to turn his life around when an inmate in Wandsworth prison. He’s built up a studio reputation in Croydon for working with young people at risk. I’ve worked with Chris for five years and now act as his external evaluator for this programme.
AH: That’s really, really interesting, Graeme. I actually didn’t expect you when we set up this interview to talk about crime reduction, because you know my perception of your work was around primary school music making, but I know from working with an organisation in Gloucestershire called The Music Works, that music can really access the potential of young people whose lives have perhaps taken them in a negative direction. So that’s really interesting to hear that that was your light bulb moment. So moving on to your research. Can you tell me why you felt this particular research was needed?
GS: Well, I think stories like Chris’s are important in demonstrating the potential impact of music, but we really need to know the mechanisms of that impact so we can replicate it in other situations. The art is often described as diversity activity in youth work, keeping vulnerable young people off the streets. But Chris’s work is more than that. It’s developmental. Croydon’s Youth Safety strategy stresses the importance of children’s emotional wellbeing. The arts are about communicating emotions, so I like the term emotional wellbeing to describe the deep impact which can be gained from the arts and from which other impacts can follow. And I want to be able to apply what I’ve learned from Chris in the school curriculum. Croydon’s Serious Youth Violence thematic review identifies the risk factors, poor mental health, struggling with identity and belonging, often exacerbated by racism, unmet learning needs, unresolved trauma. This starts in primary school. Lots of children are affected by one or more of those. There’s a mental health crisis in schools. Local Authority services are overwhelmed by requests for special needs support. And I believe that if taught in the right way, the arts has a significant role to play in addressing those needs. And I want to be able to describe that right way.
AH: That is fascinating. And we’ve talked quite a bit about trauma and unmet learning needs and identity in all sorts of podcast episodes. And I think that seeing emotional wellbeing as that kind of almost a pillar impact for from which all other impacts flow is really, really helpful for us. So can you tell me when did the initial research begin and what did it involve?
GS: It started in 2019 when we were successful in getting a capacity building grant from the Youth Endowment Fund, whose purpose is to find ways to reduce youth violence. The first step was to look at research on mental health and wellbeing, in particular descriptions of protective factors. I used my practitioner knowledge to devise an impact framework for creative and cultural learning. It’s not art form specific. It has five dimensions with descriptors for artistic processes which will support those protective factors. For five years, we used that framework with all the funded programmes we had in Croydon and across multiple art forms. We gathered evidence through surveys, structured interviews with young artists, and through observation. The young artists were asked for a score, an example for each dimension, enjoying taking part, pride in their achievements, decision making, expressing themselves and connecting to others, and how much they wanted to keep taking part in arts activity. We got some really interesting data. Average scores told us about the activity and about developing activity. So if I just give you an example, the lowest scores were for decision making, music tuition, because learning and instruments has traditionally been very didactic teachers telling children what to do. Three programmes we had focused on co-creation with young artists, they had the highest decision making scores. So we shared the results with the music teachers and discussed, how can we include co-creation of instrumental learning? Then the following year, the decision making score for music tuition improves.
AH: Ah, interesting. And that kind of connects with both the five ways to wellbeing, as well as Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory around the three factors of autonomy, competence and relatedness. And they say that those are the kind of key factors in a particular type of wellbeing.
GS: Autonomy is about giving children choices to express themselves artistically. Competence is about them making progress as artists. Relatedness is about connecting with others through collaboration or through sharing their art that’s relevant and important for everyone, but it can be more a vital developmental tool for those who are vulnerable. My evidence comes from testimony in Chris’s programme where young people make art about subjects important to them, often their own lives, and that led to the next stage of research using an impact measure. I chose SDQ’s, strengths and difficulties questionnaire, emotional behavioral screening tool. It’s commonly used in health and social care for children and young people experiencing difficulties. My focus was on vulnerable young people.
AH: Ah, that’s interesting. That’s where we have another kind of commonality. I’ve used the strengths and difficulties questionnaire in a project for when I was working with The Music Works, and it was about teenage mental health, and it was an NHS commissioned project, so it was really interesting. We had difficulties with the SDQ actually, the young people didn’t like it. But I know it’s something that the NHS wanted to use so that they could compare a music intervention with other interventions. So it’s, you know, it’s been quite important, and I know other people have used it and really valued it. So you also looked at related developmental interventions in the Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit, which is a really important education initiative. How did your results compare to these or is it too early to say?
GS: Well, the Education Endowment Foundation’s purpose is to research narrowing the attainment gap for those who are disadvantaged or vulnerable. Their guidance describes the impact mechanisms. The impact mechanisms from my research are very close to those described in the Education Endowment Foundation’s social and emotional learning guides. The arts is about communication, emotions and storytelling. It’s a perfect medium for social and emotional learning.
AH: Ah, thank you. I wonder if you can just describe in plain language what you mean by impact mechanisms, because I think lots of us working in particularly evaluating the arts and running programmes and things, are really used to that type of language, but probably some people aren’t.
GS: An impact mechanism is a way in which you carry out the activity in order that the impact that you’re looking for happens. It’s important that it’s not just done, sort of you do the art and it’s going to have those benefits. That doesn’t always happen. You can make a child practice scales on the piano. That’s not going to create enjoyment or emotional wellbeing for them.
AH: That’s really useful because, and I think it’s useful to describe that because so often in the arts, we make grand claims for what art can do or what a particular art form can do, but actually it’s the specifics of that practice that we need to understand. What about that particular practice makes the difference, and how can we perhaps replicate that or learn from that. So I think that’s really, really interesting to talk about. So can you tell me a little bit about the results, and if any of the findings surprised you perhaps?
GS: I knew the SDQ scores would show an impact. I followed the young people on their journey, interviewed them, saw them perform, but the scale of the impact surprised me. The SDQ scores showed a 44% decrease in emotional difficulties and a 28% decrease in behavioural problems after six months working with Chris. The other finding was that the impact framework can be used to describe the impact mechanisms of Chris’s work in addressing the risk factors for serious youth violence. There’s lots of research showing impacts, just look at the Cultural Learning Alliance website. But quoting that research has not been an effective advocacy tool. It’s not stopped marginalisation of the arts in schools, and I think that’s because there is no accompanying analysis of the impact mechanisms to show how to deliver arts education which can replicate those impacts alongside delivering the national curriculum. And that’s the next step in my research, to replicate those results in the primary curriculum. And for that, I needed a parallel development of a profession framework that does have art form specific criteria at different levels, it covers the expectations of national curriculum programmes of study, but it also has a personal development strand for the impact mechanisms, and that is common to all art forms.
AH: That is absolutely fascinating, Graeme, and are we, am I able to sort of signpost people to where they might find out more information about that? I can put that in the show notes. I could put your documents from the Music Mark Conference, which is where I first heard about this work. I could put that in show notes. But actually, is there anywhere else? Do you have a website, or is there a somewhere that people can access more information and kind of follow your work?
GS: I don’t have a website, but I do have my email address on that document. So if anyone wants to contact me and was interested, because I’m always keen to learn what other people are doing as well. This is how we make progress. So yes, please share that document, and if anyone wants to contact me, please do.
AH: Oh, that’s fantastic. So I will put those documents in the show notes. So finally, I usually ask people to share either three practical pieces of advice or three calls to action for others working in music for wellbeing, education, and social justice. So things that you’d like to see happen in this area in the next few years. So can I put that question to you Graeme, just to wrap up our conversation.
GS: Well, my three things, I think, one for music and arts educators say, ‘Look beyond your subject and beyond your sector’. Music educators are passionate about their art form and learning from each other, but there is much which can be learned by looking further afield. So in approaching schools, I’m going to help them by using the Education Endowment Foundation’s social and emotional learning guidance to get an impact from their arts programme. For my second one, I’d say, to the sector, make use of the new centre for arts and music education as a forum for learning from the diversity of practice and perspectives across the arts. When I started out as a violin teacher, I would never have imagined that the work of an ex-prisoner, supporting young people through rap would provide a culmination of my career, and for decision makers in government to schools don’t maintain the arts silos in the national curriculum. Take the next step from the new focus on oracy to encourage children and young people to express themselves further in the art form which speaks to them. So much of education is about filling children with important knowledge they need. But the arts can be a place where they can have autonomy and how they explore the world and their place in it. The science section of the national curriculum starts with scientific processes and using them to understand the natural world before introducing subject content for physics, chemistry and biology. It should be the same for the arts, start with the artistic processes and using them to understand the human world before introducing subject content for drama, music, dance and visual arts.
AH: Oh, that’s brilliant, Graham. I love that lens that we started the podcast with, and those are such helpful and thought provoking calls to action. And I’ve loved talking with you. I’ll put links in the show notes, as I said, so that listeners can find out more about your work, but for now, good luck with taking this forward. I’m going to be fascinated to see where it takes you. And thank you so much for joining me.
GS: Thank you very much for having me Anita. And if anyone else, I’ll say again, is interested in working this field do please get in touch.
AH: Thank you.