For children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), accessing music education is a battle.
Only 7 per cent of disabled children and young people are able to take part in groups run by local music education hubs, according to the Youth Music charity.
A recent government consultation on music highlighted SEND inclusion as a concern, particularly around the need for specialist teaching. For those with complex and medical needs requiring continual nursing care, it might be considered impossible.
That’s an assumption that musicians in Hastings have challenged.
Working with students who need round-the-clock support at the Southfield Centre in Sussex, which supports pupils aged 3–16 with complex medical and nursing needs, community interest company Lifesize created a music course focused on the senses and storytelling. The course was designed to be adapted and shaped to pique the interest of every pupil.
Sam Dook, Lifesize founder, says the team gravitated towards working with those with the biggest access barriers.
“It’s harder to get all the opportunities to people who have such a high level of support. Provisions are stretched,” he says.
“But music has such a unique ability to connect with people and I’m constantly fascinated by the impact it can have on a group of people working together.”
Birds and seascapes
The team worked with 25 pupils in four small class groups over five weeks, and each session explored a different soundscape, from the ocean to birdsong.
The group worked with classroom carers to design bespoke digital and physical instruments so children with extremely limited movement or strong sensory sensitivities had the chance to make sound.
“It’s finding a balance with something familiar, like being part of a band or playing a song, and boiling it down to its constituent parts, such as one verse, then incorporating the accessible musical instruments,” Dook says.
That might include, for example, making the sound of playing a harp by gliding a hand across an iPad.
“Really wonderful things would happen where someone might have trouble doing things with their hands but really want to join in and then they have that personal moment of victory, joining in creating this sound that’s happening across the room.”
The lessons were adaptable, adds Dook. “We had to be really elastic about what might happen in a session, what someone might need and how much energy they might be able to exhibit during a session – and to make sure they had a quality experience regardless.”
Musician Angela Won-Yin Mak, the course’s designer, describes this as teaching “that can breathe”.
I’m constantly fascinated by the impact music can have on a group of people working together
“I made sure there were layers in the session that could be adapted to all kinds of forms of participation and to what was happening, mood wise, in the room,” she says. “We had extreme heatwaves, which affected how much concentration and the sleep level that people were at.”
Mak began to build relationships with students and could observe what worked for each of them.
“After a while, you become more accustomed to the signals,” she says. “The course speaks to everybody, but what feels beautiful or fun or overwhelming is going to be different from person to person.”
The biggest challenge in designing and delivering the sessions was building trust, first with the school when proposing and creating the partnership, then with the students and carers.
“Like any group of people, you have that initial point where you are trying to build a relationship with someone. You need to win that moment,” Dook says.
Lifesize, a grant-funded community interest company working on a by-project basis (this project received funding from Youth Music), now aims to create materials that can be used by music and arts teachers in SEND more widely.
Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist
