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Situated Learning in a Large Music Organisation
Dave CamlinProgramme Leader
Higher Education & [email protected]
07580 078924
PRACTICE THEORY+
Sage Gateshead
Learning and Participation :120,000 participants each year
Mission: to entertain, involve and inspire each and every person we meet through outstanding music
Artistic Programme conceived as equally
performance & participation.
Performance Programme: c. 500 gigs a year
Year in Numbers 2011-12
“an innovative, forward-thinking university with high standards of teaching, research and support. We have strong links with industry and business, and work closely with some of the world's leading companies. Our two Sunderland campuses and our London campus are perfectly placed to ensure a life-changing student experience.”
• providing higher education in the city since 1901• proud to be an innovative, accessible and inspirational university• 17,101 students, including 2,695 international students from 118 countries• 1,338 staff• strengths range from widening access and student experience to research,
international and industry links.
TACTICS
STRATEGY
VISION
VALUES
TACTICS
STRATEGY
VISION
Strategic Partnership
VALUES
Zeserson, 2004
Strategic Partnership“strategic framework within which the partnership between Sage Gateshead and University of Sunderland will be extended and strengthened, enabling both parties to better fulfil their corporate objectives where these coincide and interact.” (Strategic Partnership Agreement)Areas of common interest include:
• Raising participation rates by providing opportunities for people regionally, nationally, internationally, to reach their full potential;
• Meeting the skills needs of the local and regional employers and their workforce through initial and continuing professional development and training;
• Enriching the social and cultural development in our communities by providing accessible lifelong learning opportunities close to all substantial centres of population;
• Working with business, public, voluntary and community sector organisations to share and utilise knowledge and skills resources for mutual benefit;
• Raising opportunities for more cost-effective working through shared deployment of resources and elimination of duplication and cost arising from competition;
• Developing institutional capabilities in scholarship, teaching and learning, research and consultancy and engagement with the community;
• Maximising opportunities to lever external funding particularly in relation to widening participation, regional development and regeneration;
• Co-ordination of representation and public relations to strengthen the voice of the institutions locally and regionally;
• Extending students’ access to high quality provision through collaborative development in areas of specialism and strength.
Undergraduate Courses
BA (Hons) Community Music• For musicians “who also think of
themselves as teachers.” (Swanwick, 1999);
• Equal focus on developing musicianship and ‘educatorship’;
• Working closely with the 100+ teaching musicians within Sage Gateshead L&P programme, and wider national communities of practice;
• Learning about the values which underpin participation by participating and reflecting.
Bmus (Hons) Jazz, Popular and Commercial Music• For musicians aspiring to careers
exclusively as performing musicians, producers, composers;
• Performance-focused;• Skills-focused;• Learning inside the industry:
• current practices;• Guest practitioners e.g. Sting,
Manhattan School of Music, Gateshead International Jazz Festival.
“The key to ensuring that honest conversation takes place is in adopting a style of leadership that is genuinely open and facilitative. Through the process of collaborative reflective dialogue [an organisation] can begin to reappraise its priorities and consider its values and vision for the future. Opportunities can be opened up for developing a process of shared leadership and responsibility, in which all members of the organisation (e.g. staff and students; artists and management) can begin to have a voice in shaping their own future .” (Renshaw, 2005, PPs. 114-115)
Dialogue
“Dialogic, as opposed to monologic, assumes that there is always more than
one voice. More than this, dialogic assumes that meaning is never singular but
always emerges in the play of different voices in dialogue together.”
(Wegerif, 2012)
Dialogue
Sage Gateshead programme fundamentally dialogic:• Has to engage wider public as both audience and participants, therefore has to
account for many, diverse and contrasting (sometimes conflicting) perspectives;• No hierarchy of music – we all have individual preferences for music, so
therefore all musics have to be represented equally e.g. orchestral performances and participatory work with the most disengaged NEETs are equally valid expressions of artistic purpose. One of the strengths of the programme is this diversity of performance and participation practices;
• Evolving and emergent programme;• ‘Learning organisation’ (Senge, 1990) whose own learning is deepened by the
facilitation of others’ learning.• Reflective dialogue therefore a key cultural feature;
“The gap between voices is what constitutes them. There is a dialogue between voices only if they are
different. If two voices merge into complete unity then the dialogue between them ceases and so the
meaning ceases.” (Wegerif, 2012)
Implications for BA (Hons) Community Music in particular:• To understand the work, and to become a full member of its practices means having
to understand how dialogue works, and develop skills in dialogic pedagogies;• The best way to learn those skills, and the values which underpin them, is to
experience them for yourself, hence the pedagogical approach to learning on the course is also dialogic.
On both courses, students are supported to develop praxial understanding - “mindful doing” (Bowman, 2005), grounding practical experience of authentic industry practices within meaningful and relevant critical perspectives.
Implications for partnership between Sage Gateshead and University of Sunderland:• value and importance of honest dialogue in establishing trust; • the nature of reciprocity, especially in challenging financial circumstances .
Dialogue
Benefits• Students learn inside industry practices, not just about them, and become full
members of authentic communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)• Flexible and inspirational pool of specialist academic tutors, mentors and guest
practitioners• Raised profile and cudos for both parties by mutual association:
• University Arts portfolio is strengthened by having specialist Arts courses delivered inside specialist facilities with specialist practitioners
• Sage Gateshead practices underpinned with academic weight of University validation
• Opportunities for both parties to situate academic dialogue within ‘real world’ practices
• Marketing convergence – partnership events and initiatives promoted by both parties through extensive networks
• Partnership principles of ‘shared risk and shared reward’, especially:• Designing practice-based undergraduate curricula involves critical reflection on
those existing practices in order to understand them and articulate them within a critical framework, so new knowledge is generated.
• Increased levels of trust arising from common purpose, shared aims and operational delivery of partnership programme make collaboration on other projects easier, including collaborative research
ChallengesChallenge
Differences in organisational and sectoral culture - arcane nature of large corporations mitigates against collaboration?
Whose quality standards are they anyway?
Branding and marketing – risk of courses being invisible, ‘neither fish nor fowl’.
Financial negotiations.
Complexity of contract raises staff safeguarding questions – Sage Gateshead has delivery contract and employs academic staff to deliver the programme, but students’ learning contract is with the University.
Physical distance between sites.
‘Pollyanna’ reasons to be cheerful
Opportunity to learn from each other!
Students’ experience underpinned by both academic and industry quality standards.
The right positioning and message makes both brands stronger, and courses more appealing.
Forces everyone to be certain we’re delivering best value.
Means we have to think more closely about supporting staff on partnership projects.
Pollyanna’s still thinking about it...
Future Development
• Art Works NE:• Peer Artist Learning;• MA Participatory Arts ;
• Widening the collaboration to include rest of faculty (film & media, events management, Performing Arts) and wider University (Business School , Cultural Leadership);
• Common research interests.
ReferencesArtworks North East [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.artworksphf.org.uk/page/artworks-
north-east-1 (accessed 6.19.13).
Bowman, W., 2005. The Limits and Grounds of Musical Praxialism, in: Elliott, D. (Ed.), Praxial Music Education: Reflections and Dialogues. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 52 – 78.
Lave, J., Wenger, E., 1991. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Renshaw, P., 2011. Working Together. Barbican-Guildhall, London.
Sage Gateshead [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.sagegateshead.com/ (accessed 6.19.13).
Sage Gateshead Annual Review 2011-12 [WWW Document], n.d. Sage Gatesh. URL http://www.sagegateshead.com/about-us/what-we-do/annual-review/ (accessed 6.19.13).
Senge, P.M., 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization: First Edition. Random House.
Swanwick, K., 1999. Teaching Music Musically, 1st ed. Routledge.
University of Sunderland, 2009. The Sage Gateshead Strategic Partnership Agreement.
University of Sunderland [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/ (accessed 6.19.13).
Wegerif, R., 2012. Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age. Routledge.
