Busking (street musician) Challenge

This project is part of our personal challenge week, where students in year 9 have a suspended timetable and sign up for projects that will see them working beyond their comfort zone.  We take chiefly non-musicians and spend three days learning to play fairly portable and immediate instruments such as kazoo, ukulele, melodica, guitar and glockenspiel. Students choose their set list based on music about which they are passionate. On the fourth day we have a practice run in Cramlington village, then on Friday they go with the school learning mentor to perform in Newcastle city centre’s busiest street. Students are able to choose what to do with any money that they make, and then are asked back into school on the Saturday to perform at the school’s community music festival.

Teacher Reflection

This project is far and away always my favourite week of the year. Seeing students progress in such a short space of time is a joy, and for most of them who have never performed as part of a band never mind in public the experience can be transformational.  This project allows students to take enormous risks but with a real sense of community and inter-dependence.  The fact that they are earning money in a completely public context makes the end product extremely high stakes. The Thursday “dry run” is vital to the process as a form of drafting and students use videos of the performance to critique each other to help make the Friday performance as high quality as is possible.  This is  a project that required little more than a few instruments as resources and a little musical nous. What is fascinating to me is how even those that don’t necessarily buy in from the start move with the critical mass of the rest of the group as the week progresses, and it is always these students that express most profound change at the end of the week.

Student Reflection

The challenge this year was extremely fun and I am so glad that I did it. My favourite part was getting into our groups and learning all of the songs that we wanted to and then getting on with it. I learned to play ukulele because of this which I would love to take further because it is amazing to play. I have received a massive confidence boost because of when we went to town to perform in front of everyone. If I could change one thing It would be only going to two places. It would be a lot better if we went to three or maybe even four places! Also if we could make a after school Busking group it would be a really good Idea!