Musical Ceremony

The musical ceremonies were part of a project that Cardiff Metropolitan University conducted with multiple primary schools, as part of the iValueU App. My group worked with Deighton Primary School, in order to create a musical ceremony as part of the Spring Equinox.

As highlighted by The Weather Channel (2015), the Spring Equinox is when the earth has exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night time. The sun is exactly perpendicular to the equator of the Earth. It was explained to us that our ancestors created musical ceremonies to celebrate the Spring Equinox and that we would be creating our own musical ceremony.

Creativity can be described as making something new and entrepreneurial with an attitude of independence (Maley and Bolitho, 2015; Franklin, 2016). Sharp (2004, p.5) describes creativity as “imagination, originality, productivity, problem solving, producing an outcome of value or worth”. This supports Nair’s (2014) definition of creativity which suggests there is two types: process creativity which has the ability to apply relevant knowledge inventively, also product creativity which takes place when work is judged by others as original and innovative. The children of Deighton Primary school were asked to create their own dance moves and musical interpretation of what spring meant to them. The children came up with the idea to start small and grow big and start slow and build up tempo on the drums. This for them represented the seeds and flowers during spring growing. Therefore, the children were creative because they were able to use their imagination to think about how plants grow during spring, and how they were going to grow themselves. They were also very original because although we, the students, gave them ideas they were able to create their own dance moves and musical beats to create the musical ceremony.

Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow can be linked with the musical ceremony, with its definition of intense concentration and opportunity to provide unique and memorable experiences which are interictally rewarding (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Hay and Nye, 2006). In addition, the idea of communitas shows support for the idea of flow, with Tuner (2012) defining it as being together, interacting in a common task with full attention. Maslow’s idea of peak experience neatly summarises the idea of flow and communitas, indicating that it lifts us to greater than normal heights so that we see things in a more positive and natural way (Maslow, 1964). While taking part in the musical ceremony, from my personal view, I was fully engaged in the session, with my all my concentration focused on the dance that my group was going to create. When watching the children in my group create their dance, they were fully engaged in what they were doing, working as a whole group and in smaller groups to create a routine that summarised all of their ideas. Before the session, we were told that in previous sessions at the university, this particular school that we worked with had experiences some behavioural issues. This was not apparent at all during the musical ceremony session as they were fully engaged, fully concentrated on creating their dance and musical routine, which indicates a significant benefit. However, Daozhi (2018) indicates that communitas can be described as unstructured, transitional and improvised in nature, therefore a contradiction to what we conducted. The children followed a plan that, we as a group, made up prior to them arriving, and so indicates that to a degree communitas was explored on the day, but there could have been more opportunity to explore it, maybe by letting the children lead some of the session.

During the musical ceremony session, the idea of collaboration was shown throughout. Collaboration can be described as deciding on a common goal, sharing responsibility and understanding as well as working together to achieve those goals (Watkins et al., 2007; Barfield, 2016). Vygotsky highlighted the importance of social interaction, indicating that it is vital in the development of knowledge and skills in children (Keenan et al., 2016). This signifies the important role that collaboration played during the musical ceremony session. Throughout the session, we as students collaborated to create a lesson plan, and worked together in teams in order make sure the children created a tribal dance routine and a piece of tribal music to accompany it. The children also collaborated during the session as they were tasked with creating their own dance moves and musical pieces. Working in small teams to create these, which would form the overall tribal dance.

Moreover, holistic learning can be seen as the whole development of the individual, educating the student as a whole and also recognising the whole child, rather than just particular areas (Hare, 2006; Mahmoudi et al., 2012). Kaigma and Audud (2014) indicate that holistic education is based on the idea that the individual finds their identity, meaning and purpose through their connections with community, reiterating the whole person.  In addition, it’s linked to the project because, as previously discussed, the idea of community and communitas was prevalent during the session, allowing for holistic education. Similarly, the musical ceremonies project also facilitated holistic learning because we gave the children opportunities to explore their interests. If the children preferred to work on the drums to create the music, or if they preferred to dance then they were allowed to explore that. We allowed them to do what they felt comfortable with, rather than just separating them into two teams, we recognised that they might have different interests. Linking back to Kaigma and Audud’s (2014) definition, we allowed the children to find their voices within the teams, allowing them at times to work within their own communities.

Furthermore, the idea of authentic learning can be linked to the musical ceremony session. Its definition of focusing on real world problems and contexts and connecting these to the students learning (Rule, 2006; Lambardi, 2007; Pearce, 2016; Roach et al., 2018), has relevance to what we carried out during the session. We explained to the children that musical ceremonies, such as the one we created, was something that our ancestors used to create in order to celebrate the transition into spring. Also, it gave the children a chance to explore the idea of the spring season and what actually happens during spring, through a different modality, maybe not also used within the school environment. Rule (2006) indicates that authentic learning allows for open-ended inquiry and thinking skills to be developed, of which was facilitated in the musical ceremony. The children were shown a video of a seed developing and growing into a flower, and we asked them what was happening in the video and how could they demonstrate that through dance and also through musical beats. By doing this, the children had to think deeply about what they had seen in the video and how they could replicate it, be that in dance style or on the drums. Authentic learning can also allow for social interaction between peers in order to support learning (Rule, 2006; Luo et al., 2017). This was a key element of the session because the children worked collaboratively to create their own sequences that represented the growth of flowers during spring, that would form part of the overall ceremony.

Authentic learning can be related to cross curricular learning as it intentionally brings in multiple disciplines and perspectives as well was many ways of working, in order for the child to experience real world contexts (Lambardi, 2007; Driscoll et al., 2015). Cross curricular learning is at the heart of the new Successful Futures curriculum set out by Donaldson (2015). It emphasises that cross curricular should be at the heart of learning so that children gain skills as well as knowledge in order to apply them to society (Donaldson, 2015). It has been indicated that by using a cross curricular approach, it has the ability to enhance child-centeredness (Sak et al., 2016). This particular study, conducted by Sak et al. (2016), was produced in Turkey, a country with a different culture to Wales and so can’t be a generalisation for the Welsh curriculum. During the musical ceremony, the idea of cross curricular was definitely apparent as the children discussed the history of the spring equinox and the musical ceremonies conducted by our ancestors. Also, the children used many areas of learning of the new curriculum including expressive arts, health and wellbeing when moving and being active, numeracy to count the number of beats required and literacy in order to discuss what the spring equinox is.

Overall, the musical ceremony with Deighton Primary school was an enjoyable experience had by all students. The experience of being able to lead this session has been of a significant benefit to me in building on my confidence, but also in developing new strategies when working with schools. It has given me the opportunity to explore cross curricular learning and see how I would use it in my pedagogy.

Below is an overview video of the tribal dance that my group created (NYYP TV Y6, 2019).

References:

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22.The Weather Channel (2015) What Is The Spring Equinox? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_vi1t5UayY (Accessed: 15.03.2019).

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25.NYPP TV Y6 (2019) Tribal ceremony Spring Equinox. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txjIRALMcPw&feature=youtu.be (Accessed: 03.04.2019).