If
you had a one-to-one with Gordon Brown, what would you
say to him? That was the question that came up
during a discussion at a recent Nordoff-Robbins open day. The
answer that resonated most around the room came from Dr
Gary Ansdell, a music therapist and Co-Head of Research
at Nordoff-Robbins. 'What about cultural democracy?' he
asked. Why are we still not providing equality of
cultural opportunity for those outside the
mainstream?
But what made his point more potent was that this
wasn't a cry only to recognise music's benefits to
individuals, but to see the benefits this kind of work
can have for communities and society at large. If we
want to achieve social inclusion in our cities
and communities, he said, why aren't we looking to the
positive effects of cultural inclusion?
Social exclusion may be most frequently a result of
economic factors, but that's not the end of the story -
geographical isolation and physical or mental health
problems, for example, can all be factors in social
exclusion. And where we begin by looking at work
happening on the ground we can often see how the
benefits filter up.
"Cultural inclusion is directly equated with social
inclusion," says Gary, "and social inclusion is
directly related with other factors - things that
government is very interested in pursuing in terms of
preventative measures in crime, health promotion,
workplace inclusion. Research in these psycho-social
areas is in very early days but looking at trends at
the moment, there are factors to do with musical
participation and cultural activities that look as
though they do have social benefits as well as
individual benefits."
Can a seemingly 'soft' activity such as making music
really lead to the hard results that politicians are
looking for - low crime rates, a healthy society? "I'm
not saying we do music in order to reduce crime rates,
or bring your blood pressure down," says Gary. "We do
music to make music. But the spin-offs are well proven
in many areas - factors such as self-esteem, how
people feel about themselves, the quality of their
relationships, confidence and the ability to perform.
These things can be used as stepping stones to develop
the necessary faculties in order to take up education
programmes, training programmes, to be marketable in
the workplace. These are clear links."
Music therapists like Gary often work at the extreme
end of the scale, with people living in what Gary calls
'circumstantial communities' - which might be the
locked ward of a psychiatric hospital, a care home or a
special school - with little access to the kind of
cultural resources the rest of us take for granted. The
work that music therapists and specialist community
musicians can do in these areas can be life-changing -
and yet is nowhere near widespread enough.
However it is sometimes once Gary's work is over
that some real holes in provision are revealed. "People
get rehabbed and they get better and they move back
into community living. And at that point they need a
different kind of provision and that's what we find, as
music therapists, is really sadly lacking. There's no
way of people handing on to other forms of music work
in the community, with a learning aim, or a community
aim or to meet people."
There are plenty of examples of music work helping
to create more cohesive communities, from Billy Bragg's
prison project, Jailhouse Rock, which has cut
reoffending rates among participants, to the famous
El Sistema in Venezuela. But
according to the Music Manifesto's Marc Jaffrey, this
is a conversation that needs taking into the
mainstream.
"This aspect of the role of music, while widely
talked about among cultural practitioners and
educators, is almost invisible in the wider civic
debate," says Marc. "Compare that to the common sense
discussions in a pub or a taxi or homes up and down the
country about the role of sport. There's a populist
language in sport that says yes, it's about winning and
the pursuit of excellence but its wider benefits are
seen to be in the domain of healthy, productive
communities that benefit from the collective endeavour
of sports participation. That's still seen as marginal
in the debate about music education, which is all about
learning an instrument."
Excellence and inclusion are in no way mutually
exclusive, quite the opposite. Real democracy would
mean that whether faced with a child with special
educational needs or an exceptional young
instrumentalist, both could have access to the kind of
specialist support they need in order to flourish -
musically, personally and socially. Would you vote for
that?