The Music Lab: ‘Musical voice’ and ‘learner voice’ in instrumental classical music education

This briefing by Anna Bull, Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the University of York, is aimed at music teachers and anyone else involved in instrumental music teaching and learning, with a particular focus on classical music. Readers may wish to use it to inform discussion with other teachers, for example as part of a professional development session. You may also wish to use it on your own, as a prompt for reflective writing or blogging on your own teaching practice.

Please let us know if you use it by tagging us on Twitter @SConnections and @anna_bull_ or emailing anna.bull@york.ac.uk.

If you are new to principles of youth voice, you may wish to start with The Music Lab – A Toolkit for Exploring Youth Voice within Music-Making Practices in Classical Music which introduces ‘youth voice’ in the context of instrumental music teaching. This briefing builds on the ideas outlined in the toolkit.

The ideas outlined in this briefing were generated during a two-day workshop called The Music Lab. This took place at Lewisham Music, led by Sound Connections and researcher Anna Bull, with music facilitator Isabella Mayne, youth worker Jacob Sakil, and project manager Liz Coomb. Jenn Raven was involved in designing and planning the project. The aim was to explore how young people’s voices could be better embedded into instrumental classical music education. The project also asked young people how classical music might change if their voices were listened to.

Following these workshops, a toolkit was developed to introduce instrumental teachers to youth voice principles, and the findings from the research were written up into an academic journal article (published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association). This briefing gives an overview of key points from the academic article in order to support instrumental teachers to deepen their practice in this area.