Emma Coulthard, Music Development Officer, Cardiff County and the Vale of Glamorgan Music Service, explains that this is a creative and developmental process which requires significant input from the students themselves to be successful.

Running a really good popular music programme has the potential to solve many of the issues facing Music Services, such as the drop in take-up of instrumental lessons as pupils enter secondary school and the lack of ensemble opportunities for the increasing number of students that are opting for guitar/drums and keyboards. One of the many challenges is how to do this without spoiling the very essence of the medium - spontaneity, independence, individuality and self-expression need to be encouraged. It must be ‘real’, not institutionalised. Here in Cardiff we have been exploring ways of developing our service to provide a vibrant programme that captures the imagination of participants, and allows them to experience first hand the excitement of being a performing musician.  
 
Cardiff Rock School has been in existence since 1999, supported by what was then the Music Development Fund. After-school band workshops were co-ordinated across the City and groups – usually friendship-based, met weekly to work with one or more tutors, developing their skills as a band and creating their own material. The Music Service had provided each school with a basic PA, amplifiers and a drum kit, as well as funding all tuition. At the end of the year, the bands got the chance to compete at a centrally located ‘Battle of the Bands’ with the winner getting to record a demo CD in a professional studio.

Despite the success of the programme, it was felt that the standard of performance was not yet at the level it should have been. Some possible reasons emerged. 

• Many of the groups were based on friendship, so there were marked differences in ability which often became frustrating. 
• The creative approach – only playing original material, whilst being highly commendable was also limiting as it kept pupils well within the boundaries of what they could already do. 
• Pupils were often held back by inexperience on their instruments – many were not having lessons and so were learning to play and working with the band at the same time. 
• Progress was also impeded by a lack of basic musical skills. There was a culture of low expectation that was not in line with the expectations of success held by traditional ensembles within the Music Service.

To begin to address these issues, we:

• Visited workshops and asked the students what they wanted from the service.
• Encouraged the use of cover versions to complement the creative work.
• Found out who was accessing tuition and who was not and looked at the reasons for this.
• Provided more instruments for students to take home to practise.
• Organised an end-of-term celebration at a prestigious city centre venue.

What we learned from this was: the students wanted to perform more (but hadn’t factored in the need to work harder on their material), many felt they could not afford tuition and instruments, not having asked their Head of Music about the remissions scheme, and they wanted more challenges. Despite this, the end-of-term awards had to be cancelled due to lack of response, caused, as I found out later, by hosting the event on a Saturday, when teachers could not bring them in.  

The following year, we kept an eye on attendance and improved communication with each Head of Music. The end-of-year event was billed not as a competition but as a showcase, and held in one of the schools. We kept the event low-key, gave encouragement, and presented each band with a DVD of their performance. The event was a cautious success and standards had improved. The pupils began to believe there was a real point to what they were doing.

During year three, feeling a lot braver, we:

• Developed a new programme called ‘School Rocks’ for Primary School children to gain musical skills, experience a live band and try out the instruments.
• Made more visits to monitor sessions and encourage pupils.
• Attended the NAME conference and spoke to David Barnard, Head of Education for Roland Ltd, who had recently sponsored a new facility in Cardiff.
• Set up a partnership with Dr Paul Carr, Head of The Music Academy at The ATRiuM, the new state-of -the art headquarters of Cardiff School of Creative Industries, University of Glamorgan. Dr Carr offered to host our Awards event, and persuaded Dr Simon Pitt – CEO of Rock School, to join us as an adjudicator.
• Managed to secure great prizes with the generous help of First Campus.
  
• Contacted the Press office.
• Hired the best PA, sound crew and lighting that money could buy, and hoped that this would inspire the students.

Suddenly, everything changed. Students and schools began to take the programme much more seriously and were excited about the prospect of playing at such a venue. Because the event was at a University, schools were very supportive, particularly as we offered their students a tour and a talk, to encourage them to think about their third-level education. Seven Bands from five schools came to perform. They were inspired and excited to have access to such facilities and to have real professionals to work with. All gave memorable performances, some of them achieving standards that surpassed all expectation.  The atmosphere in the packed theatre was electric. The adjudicators gave the bands lots of encouragement and positive feedback as they awarded the prizes. The winning band appeared in the local press, and their head teacher was extremely proud. They have now decided not to give up!

As a result of this success:

• We are in the early stages of planning a Junior Rock Academy for able and talented students, hosted at the University.
• The Primary programme gained a Grade 1 from Estyn inspectors and is being requested by more schools.
• We are training and recruiting more tutors.
• We have put a band together called the BA 38’s (The area of the brain developed by music, Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals), and present live Rock performances in schools, with songs and activities for pupil participation.
• We are piloting Gigajam – the virtual learning system, in some of our schools, so that more pupils can gain instrumental skills and develop at their own pace.
• We are developing a foundation stage programme at Key Stage 1.
• We plan more staff development sessions and more live performances in schools.
• We are exploring links with a provider in the Irish Republic, with a view to setting up an exchange programme.

It has taken persistence to move on to this level, but the momentum created by the performance at The ATRiuM will last for some considerable time. The best moment for me was seeing so many hands in the air when Dr Carr asked the students how many of them wanted to do music as a career. These pupils want and deserve the best musical education that we can provide, to give them the skills and confidence needed to follow their dreams.