Introduction from the CEO/founder
Hi my name is Simon, I set up Noise Solution in 2009. I did that because I wanted to use music to have social impact. Previously, I had a bunch of experience working with young people facing difficult circumstances, in youth justice and local authority settings where I worked alongside mental health and social services. I also had a bunch of band and music technology experience, that took me round the world, doing that touring musician thing.
Since 2009 I’ve tried to understand how best to work alongside young people, building and strengthening relationships around them and to understand why what we do at Noise Solution can sometimes be so mind blowingly transformative - this training should hopefully combine practical advice from 1000’s of hours of myself and others delivering sessions and also our research from people doing Phd and Masters, some of which I undertook at Cambridge University. We’ve thought about this a lot and we really want you to be curious about what we’ve learned. So you can apply it with your participants for amazing outcomes that can have life changing results.
Inclusion and DBS
We love that you are a real, working musician. We want to help you realise the potential that we know you have as a musician to make a massive difference in people’s lives. For this to work, you will need to commit to the idea of inclusion; we don’t want anyone to experience any barriers to making music with us, we have complete unconditional regard for those we work with, whether they are staff or participants. We also take child protection very seriously. Everyone undergoes the highest level of disclosure and barring checks and commits to doing the necessary training in this area to keep everyone safe.
Being professional, and creative and playful: What a great gig!
You will deliver music mentoring sessions with people often facing major challenges. These may include those who have mental health issues, have educational challenges, are in care, are in non-mainstream education, are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) or are involved with the criminal justice system. Whatever label someone else has given them though they are just people, who want to have fun being creative as much as you do. They might just need a hand re discovering that.
We are here to be musicians and not social workers, therapists or care coordinators; our participants often have many of these around them already. Your role is to do what we all love, engage the participant by helping them discover how to create the music they are excited by, having fun and sharing their success with family and key workers via their ‘Digital Story’. We’re building new relationships and strengthening others. We think that if you can commit to working in a way that is both fun and takes on board what Noise Solution has learned about increasing motivation and well-being, then you genuinely can have a transformational impact on people’s lives.
We trust you to be in control.
The musician (that’s you) is responsible for arranging and delivering Noise Solution sessions. At Noise Solution, we know that autonomy (choice and control) is one of three essential basic psychological needs we all need to flourish in life (more on this later), so we encourage you to have the freedom to operate in a way that suits you, while also meeting the expectations and requirements for this role. We will give you freedom in how you work but there is one caveat.
Musicians can have a reputation for a little flakiness. Noise Solution definitely doesn’t. We have a reputation for proactive professionalism and, in practice, this means delivering what we say we are going to , including the
proportionate amount of reporting that’s vital to the role, delivered when we say we will, and doing everything we can to make sessions happen. Work for you?
Getting started
Click to watch the video or read the script or both
Whenever I’ve started a new job it’s been quite nerve-racking. You’ve got loads of information thrown at you and if you’re lucky you can remember a half of what you are told. We’ve thought about this as well and rather than bombard you with everything at once we are going to give you a choice. You can just receive just the information you need in chunks, like this as and when you need them. Or get emails like the one containing the pdf and there will be a series of emails containing link after link (over the process of your training) so you’ll get a mixture of text and video.
You’ll receive at these different points in your induction, depending where you are in the process, and they will be delivered by a mixture of different Noise Solution musicians.
• This one I’m delivering, is because you’ve passed your interview
• The next one is sent once we have your references and DBS in place
• The next just before your first few sessions, shadowing a more experienced Noise Solution musician
• Then one after your first solo session
• And one after your second solo session
If you want to dive ahead and you can’t wait for them, you can choose to read and watch everything in one sitting using this link- It’s up to you. Or a mixture of the two. We like giving people choice, in fact you’ll be hearing a lot about that over the course of this training.
What we’re covering in this first chunk of information
In this first introduction video I’m going to cover 4 things
1) How we describe Noise Solution
2) What impacts you might have
3) Why does it work?
4) What your role is in all this
All videos should have accompanying scripts in grey boxes so you can read instead of or as well as watching. We want to give you as much choice as possible in how and where you access this information so you can absorb it in a way that works for you.
THIS IS NOT THE ONLY TRAINING YOU GET! You will also be paired with an experienced musician who will help you through the initial process. They will be there as your ‘buddy’. You’ll be able to watch them deliver a couple of sessions, they’ll show you in real life what you will need to do so you can ‘learn by doing as well as by reading and watching. And they are there for you to go to when you have questions. And, if all that isn’t enough, there are also forums/Whatsapp groups where you can ask questions - essentially we want you to be curious and no question is too small.
We’d always rather you asked than didn’t - we want you to be curious about how we get the best results with the young people we work with!
What we show prospective participants
How do we talk about Noise Solution - How about we start by looking at a film we share sometimes with young people when they are unsure whether they want to get involved with us.
Click to watch the video or read the script or both
Hi you’re watching this because you are interested in Noise Solution. Or maybe someones asked you to check this video out to see if you might be. Here’s the important question..
Are you interested in music?…if you are carry on watching
We’re different to a lot of other organisations. We’re professional musicians who are interested in helping you make music - whatever music you wantdrill, grime, Drum and Bass, K-pop, Alt Rock, folk. We can help you understand how to use music tech and computers to make all of those types of music. Or maybe you want to learn how to physically play piano or guitar, or drums, or a mixture of everything?…whatever it is that you are musically into or curious
learning more about, it is our job is to help you have as much fun as possible discovering how to do just that.
You might already have some great music skills! But YOU really don’t need to have any experience. We’ll work with you wherever you are starting from - we pair you with a musician who’ll ask you “what do you want to make” and away you go - you’ll have 20 hours over 10 weeks to really get into it…
Here’s some recent Noise Solution graduates who’ll tell you in their own words why they think you should give it a go..
Takeaways from that video: for you as a musician
1) you are not here to be social workers or mental health workers, your participants have enough of those all ready - your role is always to have fun with the participant,. You are here to be what we call a ‘professional friend’ helping them have fun and achieve quick wins musically.
OUR GOAL IS ALWAYS TO BUILD A RELATIONSHIP. You’ll have noticed we emphasise fun and quick wins. We are not interested in getting bogged down early on in things like scales or notation - these might come later if they want. We want our participants to feel they’ve achieved quickly, to be in control of what happens in their sessions and that means quick wins adapting to what they are interested in. I.e producing their first banging Drum and Bass track with accompanying visuals in their first session so they’ve got something they are proud of to share on their feed straight away - or perhaps learning 48 piano chords in 20 minutes (using shapes, we’ll show you how to do this). Or
both…That kind of quick success brings trust and builds that all important relationship.
In fact talking of piano, one of the worst story I ever heard about music education was a class who had piano keyboards printed out and they weren’t allowed to touch a real keyboard (only their paper ones) for 6 months before getting anywhere near a piano - If you could think of an opposite to how we want participants to experience Noise Solution - That would be it!
2) you will have heard about the digital platform and the capture and sharing of highlights and participants reflecting on each session. I cannot over stress how important this is to our work. Capturing reflections isn’t about us knowing what happened. It’s fundamentally more important. We’re mirroring their success back at participants as they name out loud how they are succeeding in their sessions - if they think I feel good or different because of this or that thing I did, and say it out loud, then they can also believe or internalise it. We’re also, through the digital story, making that participant feel seen and heard by the adults they want to ‘be seen’ by (family/key workers). Experiencing themselves as being ‘seen’ and noticed as a success at something rather than being a problem to be solved (often why they are referred).
You’ll be responsible for creating and curating engagement with each participants story, and involving and encouraging the participant and the adults around them to engage with it, actively. That’s an important part of your role…..and partly why we get the results we do.
"......Being able to (See) view and comment upon their progress after each session (in the digital story) not only helps us to see the impact of this intervention but also means that the child can see that their achievements and courage to try new things deserves to be celebrated.” Cambridge virtual school
You are probably still thinking but “What do I actually do in sessions?”. To help, we’ve listed out a point-by-point 10-week breakdown of what you need to do in any typical set of sessions - that’s not making music (see appendix ). Tasks are broken down week by week. It’s focused on the things you need to help happen rather than musical skills. We’ll also give you an overview in this document as well
View it here - You might want to print it out or save it somewhere useful.
What impacts does Noise Solution have
So we touched there on what sort of impacts our work can have, Who better to hear from than some of the young people, their families and professionals we work with, all talking about their experience Click to watch the video
We see those stories again and again at Noise Solution. We care deeply about improving well-being. In fact we don’t see ourselves as a music organisation.
“We are a well-being organisation using music to help build relationships - THIS is what improves well-being.”
If we build and improve relationships that means that our participants are more likely to have improved well-being and see the sort of impacts that you saw in the video.
We’re also really focussed on measuring any well-being change. To do this you will use an NHS well-being measurement tool. Don’t worry it’s dead simple, just seven questions about how the participant feels asked in session 1 and again (same questions) between sessions 8-10 (the questions are in their ‘Digital story and you record answers there as well).
This information is crucially important to us in determining if what we do works and then helping us in communicate the impact you have to those who fund your work.
Really, I can’t overstate enough how important and also interesting the well-being data is for us. It’s not always easy to collect that data - we need you to be really invested in making sure you get it from every set of sessions you deliver.
What does that data tell us now at the moment. Well we know that
• It is a statistical probability, if someone completes a set of sessions, we’ll improve well-being.
• That we’ve halved low levels of well-being for the last 400 young people we worked with who completed 10 sessions.
• That we have twice as much impact on well-being for young women than young men.
• That all age groups/genders who complete a set of sessions see a significant meaningful improvement in their well-being.
• We know that improved well-being is evidenced to improve outcomes for participants around health and education as well as Social outcomes - we see this ALL THE TIME
The more of this data we collect the more impressive those statements are to commissioners and they lead to us winning a whole bunch of awards, here’s a few we’ve won or been shortlisted for recently because of this data.
In fact those improvements in well-being we see, and the outcomes they indicate (like the ones earlier in the video - remember the participants talking about the impact on them? Those changes in well-being are estimated to be worth savings of 3.25 million pounds a year, to families and services across our current footprint in 2024. …If having social impact motivates you, you are in the right place!
Why does what we do work?
Click to watch the video or read the script or both
We’re often perceived as a music organisation. One that makes Hip Hop and Drill music with young men wearing hoodies and externalising their behaviours and we do that. Often with astonishing results. But it’s not just because of what we do. The making music isn’t actually the point. It’s not really why we get the great results we do. It’s much more importantly to do with how and why we do it. Let’s start with the why.
First lets start with the why:
SPOiLER We’re not actually a music organisation……we consider ourselves to be a well-being organisation, concerned with how best to create conditions that mean we’ll see an increase in Well-being. Music and the sharing of that music mentoring journey with family and key workers happens to be a really good way to do that. And here’s why
Well-being is quite a fuzzy term in most people’s minds but there is a huge amounts of research around what it is and isn’t and how best to improve. Why improve it? Because research tells us again and again and again that if we improve well-being (how people perceive themselves and their happiness
in the world) people use the Dr’s less, get on better with family , re engage with school or the mental health teams they are working with. It makes lives for everyone … better!
Now, if only there were a road map to tell us how to do improve well-being…mmmmm. There is a roadmap and it’s called Self Determination Theory.
This theory is arguably the most well evidenced framework to understand how to improve engagement, well-being and motivation (with over 1.8million academic Citations to date).
That’s how many people have written academic papers using or referring to this framework). Dr Ryan, who is one of the co creators of this theory, is literally the worlds most cited psychologist. That’s me with him there, just before presenting at the Self Determination Theory conference in Orlando in 2023.
SDT tells us what feelings to focus on to achieve our goal of improving wellbeing. SDT tells us clearly that three psychological needs have to be encouraged for well-being to thrive. Those feelings are Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness. Lets break that down..
Take a moment to think about how your brain and body actually feels when someone demands you do what they want you to do, when you feel controlled by outside forces? When you don’t have autonomy - how does that feel to you?
Or how you feel when you feel you’ve not done something well or you’ve ‘failed’ at something - when you feel you lack competence. Now how about how you feel when you have competence? and how do you you feel when you are lonely or isolated? As opposed to how you feel when you feel connected, part of something? Or related.
These three feelings are really important feelings to recognise - SDT calls them Basic Psychological NEEDS. And we’re trying to instill positive feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness in everything that we do.
Let’s look a bit closer at the three Basic Psychological needs..
Autonomy: It just means choice…or more simply giving people a choice about how we engage with them, doing with them not at them. For example we don’t ever walk into a set of sessions with a learning goal that has to be achieved, we are led by and react to that participants interests. We’re always about giving them ‘choice’ about what they want to do - and how they might want to do it.
The relationship that our musicians are able to establish with the people they work with is incredibly important. It’s much easier to engage a young person if you are giving that person choice in how they work with you. Noise Solution musicians are encouraged to be autonomy supportive to always give choices in working alongside young people and their musical projects with participants - always work with what they are interested in - Always do music with them not at them, in ways that are fun!
Competence: Just means allowing people to feel good at something, like they have value to add. Getting someone playing quickly, maybe using our piano technique (amazingly unlocks 100’s of chords easily in minutes, we’ll cover it later) Or showing them how easily they can throw some loops together (that they’ve had choice in choosing obviously!) to make whatever their preferred type music is. This brings a sense of competence quickly.
We’ve developed lots of ways of creating quick feelings of competence. We use music technology to allow people to experience quick wins in their music making, wins that are culturally responsive to them (making what they are into, rather than telling them what they should be into!) whilst not getting bogged down in traditional barriers such as scales and notation, unless they are interested.
For example we’ve developed a method for teaching piano using shapes that allows anyone to be
playing over 40 chords in 30 minutes - the piano being perhaps the ultimate symbol of musical complexity - by breaking it down and putting it in a different way - you encourage confidence, competence and trust in your relationship with the person you are working with., where you as the musician are asking them ‘do they want to try something’ then showing the participant how to be ‘good at that something, quickly’ Something they didn’t think they could do.
Ask yourself this question - How do you feel when someone says you are good at something?
Relatedness: means allowing people to feel connected - seen, heard and valued by others. ’
We/you are capturing their evolving growing feelings of competence (that you help them feel) and mirroring them back at them, via the ‘Digital story’. The story is shared weekly with those adults they feel a connection to - where they see those adults commenting on their success. This impacts on how they feel about themselves.
You control that process. Each digital story feed is a mirror for the participant where they can actually see posts of themselves being successful (often against a backdrop where lots in their life is challenging, and people are constantly pointing out they are ‘failing’) Yet, this feed does the opposite and is always projected onto the screens of those significant adults whose voices they value, the parents the key workers . It changes people’s perception of what
This young person can do. It is these voices your participant see’s and values, as they see comments on the posts and in their feeds.
We have significant impact, by reinforcing those feelings of competence . Participants experience a different narrative about themselves - one of success not problems. In a way that isn’t about making them ‘a problem’, or making them a problem or them a medical issue - The story also builds a bridge for those adults to help create that new story with them..
If you encourage all three of these things (autonomy, competence, relatedness) then you create a sweet spot, time and time again parents and professionals have said this process acted as a catalyst for changes in how people felt about themselves - you’re critical in creating those conditions of autonomy, competence and relatedness in which someone could choose to flourish.
SDT in a Summary
It’s actually not that complicated - we ask people what music they want to make, help them do it quickly, make sure they are having fun doing it, capture the best bits and their thoughts about how it made them feel and share all that via their ‘Digital Story’ with the people who they think are important.
If you really want to dive in here’s a book chapter I wrote about it all.
But obviously there can be a bit more to it than that - what about your role in a bit more detail? What do you do once a set of sessions is assigned, what do you need to do during the sessions and what happens after sessions? You’ll be assigned a buddy who can answer all questions but we thought it would be helpful to go over in an overview where you can see all the things you need to do step by step. We’re not expecting you to remember all this in one go. This is just intended to give you a flavour. We’ll be giving you more detailed videos on all these elements as you go through them, as already mentioned there’s a breakdown in the appendix and there is always us to ask if you are unsure about anything.
Top tips from a musician
Throughout these documents we thought it would be good to hear from musicians delivering the work to give you their top 3 tips for working as a Noise Solution musician. Click to watch the video
An overview of your role in video
We’ll be going over everything in this next video in more detail later - but for now this is a handy overview that you can read or watch or both.
Click to watch the video or read the script or both
Let’s break this up into three sections - what you need to do before sessions start, while sessions are happening and after sessions.
Before sessions even start
We’ll have asked you if you want to take a set of sessions on. You can always so no at this point it’s entirely up to you, but Let’s presume you’ve said “yes” now what? You’ll talk with the parent/carer/participant to coordinate when and where sessions will be - this way you have more control over what’s likely to work for you and your participant. You decide when sessions happen between you, not us (we trust you).
You’ll add session times and dates into our platform (This is very easy to do (we’ll show you how) but it’s super important to keep these up to date at all times! - Many many things depend on this being up to date. Things like your pay hours calculation, triggers for automated emails to families and professionals and our own finance calculations all depend on it!). It really is important to be up to be accurate and always up to date.
If needed, you’ll want to book the studio/venue that’s going to work for where the participant is. Normally this starts at Sessions 6 - but you’ll need to think ahead in case it gets booked - in the new look community you should be able to see details for studios we use.
Once you know a bit about your participant you’ll record and post a video welcome message to the participant’s Noise Solution story feed, introducing yourself AND NAMING THEM IN THE VIDEO. Once we’re all ready to go we’ll trigger emails of times and dates of all those sessions to everyone in the group of people around the young person (told you keeping session bookings accurate and up to date was important….It will also trigger onboarding emails for families and participants to set up passwords to access the feed - where the first thing the participant/family and key workers will see on successfully logging in, will be your video message (don’t worry we’ll show you how to word it). Why post that video? - what’s its purpose?
The hardest part of this work can often be about getting the person to the first session, you posting a video that ACTUALLY names them and talks to them directly is designed to give the participant a human face to connect with and make that first session more likely to happen .
During sessions it’s simple
You have fun making music. You deliver the sessions, make the participant feel great about creating music - This is where your musical skills, sense of fun and playfulness are vital. It’s also where you need to be aware of and apply some of that Self Determination Theory awareness (sounds scarier than it is). Make them feel in Control of decisions (Autonomous). Help them sound great (Competence). Make them feel they have a good relationship with you and the people in their digital story (Relaatedness). There are strategies for doing this that we’ll share with you in an upcoming part of your training.
In session 1
First you’ll discuss some safeguarding things with the participant like setting boundaries, if they say something that makes us worry about their safety (we’ll show you how to do this). There will also be a discussion about A.I we are building in the analysis of video reflections in each session via A.I for which we need consent - there is a really video you can show them explaining what we’re doing. You’ll also ask the participant to do a Start Questionnaire on wellbeing. Why? Because we track well-being as a measure of how the organisation is doing. This is the lifeblood of the organisation. Lots of people get stressed about asking these questions because they feel they get in the way - but we want you to embrace it because it’s incredibly useful and is a huge reason we get the work we do. For example here’s a chart from the last 420 people we worked with. We can clearly see the trend of positive impact on the participants we work with. In fact we’ve halved those experiencing low levels of well-being and tripled those feeling high levels (compared against 30,000 responses from other organisations using the same scale we use).
I cannot state how important getting this data is at the start and end of the set of sessions, and how much we care about it - It’s really bloody interesting understanding how, by making music with kids in studios in a very specific way we understand how it has an impact - with what ages, or gender we see most impact - honestly, it’s really really interesting to us, we use this data all the time…..and I say again it’s literally what enables us to get you more work :)
You’ll also be responsible for curating/creating capturing a record of the highlights of each session in their ‘Digital Story’ and uploading the pictures and videos and music for this. You can do this during sessions (recommended) or afterward - if, say, there wasn’t any wifi. Those well-being results we mentioned - turns out that the more engagement with the digital story we see - the better the well-being outcomes - told you this stuff is interesting.
The digital story helps set a culture of them feeling valued in making music together. Every session (if they agree to) you’ll post at least 3 photos, some of the music created in the session, some positive quotes from the participant and a reflection video of you in conversation with the participant about what worked, didn’t work and what they thought about it all (or audio text of it) Again….this is really important to the work - we’ve done the research.
We know the more engagement the participant sees and we/you get with the digital story the more impact on well-being we have. The mechanism to this is getting the participant to externalise or say out loud whats actually working for them (that they can then own because they’ve said it - and also to ‘see’ their success mirrored back at them and to make family and others react positively via the feed….….which in turn makes the participant feel even more
‘seen’ and valued - Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness all in the same digital space..
Directly after sessions
Obviously we need to know if the session happened and this information is vital to know ASAP (especially if they are on roll at a school and missing). Whether the session happened or not. You’ll update what we call the session status, on the platform (direct from the participants feed, again super easy) after each session. Attendance marking is important our end as well as it is one of the things we use to help calculate our finances!
After the session you’ll also complete a session report, asap at the very latest within 24 hours of each session. We automatically see a copy of that report, AS DOES the referring professional key worker - it’s our way of keeping’s and them involved and up to date - super important.
It’s also here that you can tick a box if you have any concerns around safeguarding - if you tick that box the senior team are emailed immediately and can assess our response to the situation straight away.
On the same page you can also ensure you Keep the session management up to date (when things are happening). As we’ve said it’s important for many reasons to keep the sessions up to date. Helps you keep organised, means the people around the sessions are automatically updated correctly about when things happen. And it’s what your and our invoicing is based on!
Digital hygene
You’ll understand that it’s not ok to keep pictures of your sessions on your phones once you’ve uploaded them. It’s best practice to get into the habit of deleting media of sessions from your phone.
Curating the story
We’re always trying to keep the show on the road and encourage engagement with the ‘Digital Story’ feed. This may involve calling or emailing with their carer/parent, professionals and your musician buddy in-between sessions to do things like identify an appropriate progression pathway or to encourage engagement with the feed.
Marking the completion of a set of sessions - celebrate
Maybe invite a parent/carer/teacher/mental health worker/social workerwhoever is most important to the participant, to join you for the last half hour of the final session - celebrate their achievements by reviewing the beautiful Noise Solution story you’ve made - you made a beautiful Nose Solution story right?
Between sessions 8 and 10 you absolutely need to do all you can to make sure the end well-being questionnaire is completed! It’s the same as the one at the start - but unless we have both the start one on its own is uselessWe have to compare the start one against the end one to get any useful data to show commissioners
Other stuff
Some participants elect to do a qualification (Called an Arts Award), we’ll provide training for you on how to do this. If they do an arts Award qualification - you need to ensure that together you make sure a portfolio is complete and you’ve done everything you need for this (we will pay for this training).
Supervisions
You’ll meet up with us once a quarter to discuss how things are going, evaluate the effectiveness of sessions and discuss any areas you would like to focus on. Supervisions are paid at a different rate than sessions but they are paid.
That’s a brief overview - there is a more detailed list (linked to in the appendix section for you to use as a reference.
A lot of those steps in that last section of video involve our platform, there will be more training on how to use it but what you need to know is that everything the whole organisation does goes through this platform - it’s ability for us to see what’s happening via the ‘Digital Stories and it’s ability to capture and analyse the well-being data is helping us understand what’s working and what is not.
No system is perfect and it’s an evolving platform but it’s super important to remember that those stories you are creating and curating are having impact for participants and families, the details you fill in when sessions happen or don’t! are all triggering all sorts of automated messages to everyone about what’s happening when - so they have to be accurate. And that well-being data, well It helps us make the case for more work.
What's next?
The next video will drop when we have all your DBS/references information. We’ll be looking at safeguarding how you set sessions up and how we get stuff into the system.
One last thing: Which DAW we use
Just a quick word on what we use to make music. This entirely depends NOT on which one you know best, but on which one the participant is most likely to be able to carry on making music with. Do they have a computer? Is it a PC or Mac? Do they have money to pay for software (unlikely) You’ll probably work this out as you get started.
It’s unlikely they are going to able to use Logic for example. But they can use Reaper (Free download/Mac/PC) and they can use Ableton (we have a licence deal that means we can give them licences (Free/Mac/PC) We also have a
browser based DAW called YUMU that we can use (Free and browser based) which is great for early start musicians and also for remote sessions. If they are already using something - use that!
Appendix
I’ll say again that it is really not all that complicated - Lots of musicians are doing this and thriving and loving the work, we ask people what they want to make, help them do it, have fun doing it, capture the best bits and share them with the people who they think are important. Here’s all the steps to a set of sessions set out. We’ll include this is in all the following pdfs at different stages of your training so you’ll always have it to reference.
A reminder: You are also going to shadow someone else for the first couple of sessions; you’ll have a Noise Solution ‘buddy’ too ask questions of and we’ll be on hand to answer questions as well. You are not alone! but we thought a complete quick overview of the ten weeks might be a useful as well.
What does a set of sessions look like for you when we break it down week by week?
It’s a given that each session is going to be about you trying to enable the participant to have as much fun as possible making whatever music that they want, getting quick wins for them, but to get the results we want and to do it safely there are a bunch of other things that also have to happen.
The list of things below looks daunting but remember we’ve got loads of musicians brilliantly doing this and they were felt as daunted as you when they started! Even Jimi Hendrix was rubbish at guitar the first time he picked one up - this takes practice and we are here to help.
1. Pre Session:
Let’s imagine we’ve given you a participant to work with: What are the things over the 10 weeks (apart from having fun and making music) that you need to do
1.1) You contact the school/family/carer (whoever is on the referral form we’ve shared with you) to arrange time and place for the sessions as soon as possible. Who to contact will depend on whether sessions are happening at school, home, care home or studio. [there is a “first conversation” training video]
1.2) Check all the dates with the person you are arranging them with try to make them consistent.
1.3) Book those sessions in the system, but take into consideration school holidays etc. [there is a “Booking sessions” training video]
1.4) Booking sessions in is vital for the platform to work properly (it triggers automatic communication with participants, family and professionals, and incidentally….tracks how much you get paid)
1.5) Record and upload an introduction video to the participant’s ‘Digital Story’ using our platform [there is a “recording introduction video” training video] AND click the “I’ve uploaded my intro video” button.
1.6) Hitting that button triggers automated emails that onboard everyonesetting up their passwords etc etc There is a “personalised intro” training video and script available
1.7) What studio will you be using? If all sessions are at the studio, is the studio booked? There is a [there is a “Booking studios” video] video
1.8) Always have photo ID (as schools and care homes will ask for it)
1.9) Have your DBS certificate if you have one with you before your first session (if you are on the update service we will have provided school with the relevant info, hint that’s much much easier)
2. First Session:
Here it is session one, where all the culture, relationships and expectations are set. The following is a guide not an instruction - we trust you to gauge if something is going to work with a participant or not.
2.1) It’s important to be aware of avoiding barriers to the session starting smoothly (such as a school reception not expecting you, not being able to find parking). Arrive a little early for the first session to avoid any disruption.
2.2) We take safeguarding seriously. You’ll explain your safeguarding responsibilities to the young person, Trust us this helps to avoid things breaking down later if there are concerns that need to be reported.
2.3) You’ll explain to the participant who is in their ‘Digital Story’ group. Checking they are happy with everyone to be there and asking would they like to add (or remove) anyone else to their ‘Digital Story’ feed?
2.4) You’ll facilitate the participant filling out their Start well-being questionnaire. We’re always positive about this, it’s incredibly useful to the organisation. There is a training video on why we use it and why it’s important [there is a “Start questionnaire” training video]
2.5) You’ll check if the participant has ‘Digital Story’ access? Have they been able to log in? If not we need to support this happening. Do they have their own email address or are they using a family member’s or a carer’s We can easily change the details so they can log in - they just need an email address they can check.
2.6) Is the Arts Award qualification an option? Have you had the training? [there is a “gathering arts award evidence” training video] We’re always led by the participant if they want to great, if they don’t also absolutely grand, we give them the choice.
2.7) Each session you will do an end of session reflection video. Have a recorded discussion with the participant using open questions that you post on their feed. Can you respond to what they say and create a conversation that highlights positives and captures how they feel? Can you encourage them to reflect on their own competence, autonomy, and relatedness (without using those words) [there is a “reflection videos” training video]
2.8) You’ll complete a session report within 24 hours of the session happening (and for every session after, whether they happen or not). It’s what we tell referring professionals they will get when they purchase a programme. Sending reports and keeping sessions up to date also automatically tracks the organisation’s finances so is vital for accurate budgeting and forecasting. [there is a “writing reports” training video]
3. Session three to four:
You’re starting to get going and into a routine
3.1) You’ll need to confirm and organise the studio being booked for session 6-10? Checking who is handling travel and that they have that covered (we do not do travel).
3.2) You’ll think about what can you do to get more engagement with the Digital Story? Are people commenting and liking? [there is a “being the storyteller” training video] for encouraging this.
3.3) What does promoting competence, autonomy and relatedness for this participant look like? How are you doing it? [there is a “psychological needs strategies” training video]
3.3) What can you do to encourage continuing engagement with music making? What barriers can you remove? Would they like an Ableton licence? Are they set up on for browser DAW’s like YuMu or BandLab? Do they need help installing software on their own laptop or tablet?
3.4) Can you encourage the participant to add anyone to the group?
4. Session five:
4.1) Are there any progression routes identified? What might “next steps” look like for the participant? Discuss with participant and professionals. This is where reporting can be very useful, discuss how the professionals can help organise progression. [There is a “holding progression in mind” training video]
4.2) What else is the participant interested in and how can you help them look at those things?
4.3) Take a moment to look over the ‘Digital Story’ with the participant and remind them how far they’ve come already from where they started - get them to reflect on it and put those quotes on the ‘Digital Story’ and in the Session report (that can happen every session really)
4.5) Studio sessions, can they get there next week (We don’t do travel!)
5. Session 6-8:
5.1) Continue conversation around progression and actively work on anything that has been identified.
5.2) Would the participant like a family member or professional to come to a session to see what they’re up to? If not the next couple of sessions then float the idea of someone coming to last half hour of the last session.
5.3) Think about how you will do the final session and reflections with participant and whoever is joining them (Especially if you still have Arts Award Evidence to collect) The person coming can often be a great opportunity to collect the evidence for the participant teaching someone else.
5.4) Start thinking about collecting the final questionnaire between sessions 8 and 10 [There is a “End questionnaire” training video]
5.5) Start flagging that the sessions are nearing completion.
Session 9:
6.1) Who is coming along to the final session next week? [There is a “End celebration” training video]
6.2) Done the End questionnaire yet? Even if an extension is happening. [There is a “End questionnaire” training video]
Session 10:
7.1) Celebration session (ideally with someone joining for around the last half hour)
7.2) Use some of the session to reflect on the whole programme and include whoever else has come in that discussion. How has it been for the participant? How has it been for their parent/carer/professional?
7.3) Discuss next steps that have been identified
Extensions:
By extension we mean, that around 35% of participants will be given funding to continue to do another more hours, However:
8.1) Be aware that we always ask referring professionals if they would like an extension, but this may or may not happen so avoid raising expectations with participants about continuing: “I can ask but can’t promise anything”
8.2) Are you happy and able to continue with the participant? If not, discuss with the Project Manager
8.3) Start and end questionnaires only need to happen for the first block of sessions so no need to do them in an extension.
8.4) Is the Arts Award an option? Have you had the training? [There is a “gathering arts award evidence” training video]
General points:
On reflections:
9.1) Paraphrase and post the positive things that participant has said during the session on their feed, checking that they are ok with the wording. You are trying to ‘pump prime’ or encourage positive comments back to read out to the participant next week.
On reporting:
9.2) A good session report focusses on positives and negatives with a factual description of the session. Were there any moments that highlight engagement and/ or improvements in well-being? The report is also an opportunity to communicate with professionals and engage them in the process. Review the reflection video and quote positive things participants have said. [There is a “writing your report” training video]
9.3) Maybe use a positive quote as a title for the report? What can you do to pull people into reading/watching and commenting.
9.4) Log a safeguarding concern if necessary [there is a “logging a safeguarding concern” training video, but at any point if you are at all unsure call us, always
9.5 If a participant doesn’t turn up to a session: How can you get to where the young person is before deciding to treat it as a “completed absent session”?
9.6) Have you phoned home to see if you can go there?
9.7) Can you do the session online instead?
9.8) Even if you only end up having a half-hour session, the continuity is important and proves to the participant that you care.
9.9) If none of the above work, is there something else you can be using the time for? Do you have any other sessions to book, professionals to chase or blogging to do? [there is a “strategies for no-shows” training video]
Notes: