Glasgow: Arts and Minds - St Mungo's Learning Community

What is this?

Based on the ideas of Ben Zander and Professor Paul Robertson, the Arts and Minds project will establish programmes to demonstrate the scope of music to improve listening, language and literacy skills, to promote students' creativity and shared enterprise and to raise and sustain aspirations for achievement and attainment within a Learning Community.

The project will be founded on examples of good practice in partnerships for creative music making and music-based research already established in the St. Mungo's Learning Community and it will also develop an innovative Room 13 project featuring music as its principal art form.

Arts and Minds will feature three inter-related core strands:

Specialist music input for nurseries and P1 - 4, based on the ideas of Kodaly and Dalcroze and linked to the promotion of creativity and the strengthening of literacy skills through active music making. A pilot research project conducted at Queen Mary Street Nursery has already produced significant results indicating a relationship between specialist music provision in early years education and raised attainment in literacy. Sustained input to early years' education throughout the St. Mungo's Learning Community offers the possibility to highlight music's potential impact at this vital stage of learning and development.
A dedicated Listening Well Programme at Glasgow Listening Centre [based at Sacred Heart Primary School] for children and young people within the St. Mungo's Learning Community with learning, emotional and behavioural difficulties, where auditory deficits may be an underlying cause of inability to engage with or to maximise learning opportunities. This will create the potential to reduce problems identified within the assessment process, leading to improved listening skills and increased motivation to engage in learning initiatives.
The introduction of an innovative Room 13 project for young people in P5 – 7, with music at the centre of the enterprise. The Room 13 project will be piloted at Sacred Heart Primary School, building on the investment already made in fostering students' interest and skills in creative music-making, with the potential to develop this model of working to other primary schools in future years. This will feature musician/s in residence, supported by placement teams from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama [RSAMD], appointed by the Sacred Heart students to work with them to generate initiatives in creative education.

FLaT involvement?

FLaT support is being provided to help explore the different strands outlined above, and the potential impact they have on learning and teaching within the learning community.

Links with National Priorities?

1. Achievement and Attainment
2. Framework for Learning
3. Inclusion and Equality
4. Values and Citizenship
5. Learning for Life

Project aims?

To promote singing, creative music-making and participation in specialist listening programmes as a catalyst for innovation in education, artistic achievement, and development of enterprise and active citizenship.
To provide opportunities for pupils, their parents and teachers to collaborate in educational initiatives, drawing ideas from the Making Learning Visible research on group learning to document progress.
To develop programmes that will be particularly relevant to young people who may be disaffected from the traditional curriculum, who are at risk of exclusion from school but who have distinct entrepreneurial and creative potential.
To establish close links between nursery, primary, secondary and higher education to encourage young people to progress through each stage of their education with increased confidence.
To promote business and enterprise skills within the Room 13 project, to encourage young people to direct their own learning, to develop the potential to manage their own affairs and to sustain this initiative for the future.

Project outcomes?

Arts and Minds will generate a range of outcomes related to the following areas of growth and development, some of which will relate more directly to specific strands of the project:

Growth and development of creative and expressive skills;
Growth and development of artistic and performance skills;
Growth and development of listening, language and literacy skills;
Growth and development of ability in self-directed learning and engagement in educational processes;
Growth and development of collaborative and democratic learning styles between young people, teachers and parents;
Acquisition of business and enterprise skills;
Increased collaborative working between educational sectors;
Development and consolidation of sustainable partnerships with arts and business organisations.

Outcomes within the Listening Well strand will vary according to the different needs of individual children and young people and individual goals set at the time of assessment, but the following broad results are anticipated:

improvement in listening skills, attention and concentration, leading to a better capacity for learning;
reduction in levels of anxiety and stress, leading to an improvement in the balance of energy and a greater sense of well-being;
increased confidence and self-esteem and an overall improvement in communication and language skills;
better co-ordination and balance.

Outcomes for Room 13 need to be suggested by the students themselves, but the following indicators can be offered at this stage:

development of students' understanding and implementation of Room 13 philosophy in collaboration with established Room 13 members;
development of a democratic learning culture;
development of students' musical competence as composers and performers;
development of students' management and enterprise skills.

Timescale?

The project started in January 2005 and will run through till December 2006.

Level of Support?

FLaT support is a grant of £273,667, plus evaluation costs.

Who are the evaluation team?

To be agreed.

Contact person:

Mary Troup, c/o Sacred Heart Primary School, 31 Reid Street, Glasgow, G40 4AR. Tel 0141 554 5949. Email: m.troup@rsamd.ac.uk