Situated Learning in a Large
Music Organisation
Dave Camlin
Programme Leader
Higher Education & Research
dave.camlin@sagegateshead.com
07580 078924
PRACTICE
+
THEORY
Sage Gateshead
Mission: to entertain, involve and
inspire each and every person we
meet through outstanding music
Artistic Programme
conceived as equally
performance &
participation.
Performance Programme:
c. 500 gigs a year
Learning and Participation :
120,000 participants each year
Year in Numbers 2011-12
“an innovative, forward-thinking university with high standards of
teaching, research and support. We have strong links with industry and
business, and work closely with some of the world's leading companies.
Our two Sunderland campuses and our London campus are perfectly
placed to ensure a life-changing student experience.”
•
•
•
•
•
providing higher education in the city since 1901
proud to be an innovative, accessible and inspirational university
17,101 students, including 2,695 international students from 118 countries
1,338 staff
strengths range from widening access and student experience to research,
international and industry links.
Strategic Partnership
TACTICS
TACTICS
STRATEGY
STRATEGY
VISION
VISION
VALUES
VALUES
Zeserson, 2004
Strategic Partnership
“strategic framework within which the partnership between Sage Gateshead and University of
Sunderland will be extended and strengthened, enabling both parties to better fulfil their corporate
objectives where these coincide and interact.” (Strategic Partnership Agreement)
Areas of common interest include:
• Raising participation rates by providing opportunities for people regionally, nationally,
internationally, to reach their full potential;
• Meeting the skills needs of the local and regional employers and their workforce through
initial and continuing professional development and training;
• Enriching the social and cultural development in our communities by providing accessible
lifelong learning opportunities close to all substantial centres of population;
• Working with business, public, voluntary and community sector organisations to share and
utilise knowledge and skills resources for mutual benefit;
• Raising opportunities for more cost-effective working through shared deployment of
resources and elimination of duplication and cost arising from competition;
• Developing institutional capabilities in scholarship, teaching and learning, research and
consultancy and engagement with the community;
• Maximising opportunities to lever external funding particularly in relation to widening
participation, regional development and regeneration;
• Co-ordination of representation and public relations to strengthen the voice of the
institutions locally and regionally;
• Extending students’ access to high quality provision through collaborative development in
areas of specialism and strength.
Undergraduate Courses
Bmus (Hons) Jazz, Popular and
Commercial Music
•
•
•
•
For musicians aspiring to careers
exclusively as performing musicians,
producers, composers;
Performance-focused;
Skills-focused;
Learning inside the industry:
• current practices;
• Guest practitioners e.g. Sting,
Manhattan School of Music,
Gateshead International Jazz
Festival.
BA (Hons) Community Music
•
•
•
•
For musicians “who also think of
themselves as teachers.” (Swanwick,
1999);
Equal focus on developing
musicianship and ‘educatorship’;
Working closely with the 100+
teaching musicians within Sage
Gateshead L&P programme, and wider
national communities of practice;
Learning about the values which
underpin participation by participating
and reflecting.
Dialogue
“The key to ensuring that honest conversation takes place
is in adopting a style of leadership that is genuinely open
and facilitative. Through the process of collaborative
reflective dialogue [an organisation] can begin to
reappraise its priorities and consider its values and vision
for the future. Opportunities can be opened up for
developing a process of shared leadership and
responsibility, in which all members of the organisation
(e.g. staff and students; artists and management) can
begin to have a voice in shaping their own future .”
(Renshaw, 2005, PPs. 114-115)
“Dialogic, as opposed to monologic,
assumes that there is always more than
one voice. More than this, dialogic
assumes that meaning is never singular but
always emerges in the play of different
voices in dialogue together.”
(Wegerif, 2012)
Dialogue
Sage Gateshead programme fundamentally dialogic:
• Has to engage wider public as both audience and participants, therefore has to
account for many, diverse and contrasting (sometimes conflicting) perspectives;
• No hierarchy of music – we all have individual preferences for music, so
therefore all musics have to be represented equally e.g. orchestral performances
and participatory work with the most disengaged NEETs are equally valid
expressions of artistic purpose. One of the strengths of the programme is this
diversity of performance and participation practices;
• Evolving and emergent programme;
• ‘Learning organisation’ (Senge, 1990) whose own learning is deepened by the
facilitation of others’ learning.
• Reflective dialogue therefore a key cultural feature;
Dialogue
Implications for BA (Hons) Community Music in particular:
• To understand the work, and to become a full member of its practices means having
to understand how dialogue works, and develop skills in dialogic pedagogies;
• The best way to learn those skills, and the values which underpin them, is to
experience them for yourself, hence the pedagogical approach to learning on the
course is also dialogic.
On both courses, students are supported to develop praxial understanding - “mindful doing”
(Bowman, 2005), grounding practical experience of authentic industry practices within
meaningful and relevant critical perspectives.
Implications for partnership between Sage Gateshead and University of Sunderland:
• value and importance of honest dialogue in establishing trust;
• the nature of reciprocity, especially in challenging financial circumstances .
“The gap between voices is what constitutes them.
There is a dialogue between voices only if they are
different. If two voices merge into complete unity
then the dialogue between them ceases and so the
meaning ceases.” (Wegerif, 2012)
Benefits
•
•
•
•
•
Students learn inside industry practices, not just about them, and become full
members of authentic communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)
Flexible and inspirational pool of specialist academic tutors, mentors and guest
practitioners
Raised profile and cudos for both parties by mutual association:
• University Arts portfolio is strengthened by having specialist Arts courses
delivered inside specialist facilities with specialist practitioners
• Sage Gateshead practices underpinned with academic weight of University
validation
• Opportunities for both parties to situate academic dialogue within ‘real world’
practices
Marketing convergence – partnership events and initiatives promoted by both parties
through extensive networks
Partnership principles of ‘shared risk and shared reward’, especially:
• Designing practice-based undergraduate curricula involves critical reflection on
those existing practices in order to understand them and articulate them within a
critical framework, so new knowledge is generated.
• Increased levels of trust arising from common purpose, shared aims and
operational delivery of partnership programme make collaboration on other
projects easier, including collaborative research
Challenges
Challenge
‘Pollyanna’ reasons to be cheerful
Differences in organisational and sectoral culture arcane nature of large corporations mitigates against
collaboration?
Opportunity to learn from each other!
Whose quality standards are they anyway?
Students’ experience underpinned by
both academic and industry quality
standards.
Branding and marketing – risk of courses being
invisible, ‘neither fish nor fowl’.
The right positioning and message
makes both brands stronger, and courses
more appealing.
Financial negotiations.
Forces everyone to be certain we’re
delivering best value.
Complexity of contract raises staff safeguarding
questions – Sage Gateshead has delivery contract
and employs academic staff to deliver the
programme, but students’ learning contract is with
the University.
Means we have to think more closely
about supporting staff on partnership
projects.
Physical distance between sites.
Pollyanna’s still thinking about it...
Future Development
•
•
•
Art Works NE:
• Peer Artist Learning;
• MA Participatory Arts ;
Widening the collaboration to include rest of faculty (film
& media, events management, Performing Arts) and wider
University (Business School , Cultural Leadership);
Common research interests.
References
Artworks North East [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.artworksphf.org.uk/page/artworksnorth-east-1 (accessed 6.19.13).
Bowman, W., 2005. The Limits and Grounds of Musical Praxialism, in: Elliott, D. (Ed.), Praxial Music
Education: Reflections and Dialogues. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 52 – 78.
Lave, J., Wenger, E., 1991. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University
Press.
Renshaw, P., 2011. Working Together. Barbican-Guildhall, London.
Sage Gateshead [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.sagegateshead.com/ (accessed 6.19.13).
Sage Gateshead Annual Review 2011-12 [WWW Document], n.d. Sage Gatesh. URL
http://www.sagegateshead.com/about-us/what-we-do/annual-review/ (accessed 6.19.13).
Senge, P.M., 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization: First Edition.
Random House.
Swanwick, K., 1999. Teaching Music Musically, 1st ed. Routledge.
University of Sunderland, 2009. The Sage Gateshead Strategic Partnership Agreement.
University of Sunderland [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/ (accessed
6.19.13).
Wegerif, R., 2012. Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age. Routledge.
Thank You!
Dave Camlin
Programme Leader
Higher Education & Research
dave.camlin@sagegateshead.com
07580 078924