EVOLUTION OF A PARTNERSHIP

Six years ago, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire head of strings Louise Lansdown established a partnership with a music centre in Soweto to launch the Arco project, providing in-person and online lessons for South African string students. Here she reflects on the importance of the scheme and on how it has developed

An Arco group ensemble class at the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music (MICM) in Soweto, South Africa, in 2017

PHOTOS JAN REPKO

In 2015 I founded the Arco project at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) along with my colleagues and students. The raison d’être of the project was to support the string teaching programme at the Morris Isaacson Centre for Music (MICM) in Soweto, South Africa, while simultaneously giving valuable first-hand teaching experience to RBC string students. Arco meets these needs by allowing student teachers from RBC to provide weekly online one-to-one and ensemble lessons for young Sowetan string players (currently aged 7–19), complementing the weekly face-to-face lessons provided by South African MICM teachers.

The ultimate goal of Arco is for this cross-cultural collaboration to create opportunities for learning and growing for all involved. By teaching real students, RBC student teachers can practise the skills learnt during intensive, specialised pedagogy training at the conservatoire. They also learn the many ‘soft skills’ that every good teacher develops: team building, communication and diplomacy. MICM teachers benefit from ongoing teacher training. They attend UK courses, and reflect on their own practice by mentoring RBC student teachers. Similarly, RBC staff get to see the results of their student teacher mentees’ work, and help build a sense of community, shared initiative and empowerment. Most importantly, young string players from Soweto, a region affected by pervasive socio-economic difficulty, are given access to an international community of musicians, and to opportunities not available to them locally.

As Arco enters its seventh year of operation, these goals and opportunities are more important than ever before. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, online teaching and teacher training have become integral to string pedagogy. Additionally, mounting concerns over racial injustice and inequity have shed a harsh light on the prejudices that linger in every aspect of society. Prejudices and inequity can easily creep into music education, and projects like Arco have an especially clear responsibility to address them.

Arco operates in a complex socio-political context. Apartheid policy (1948–94) had a significant impact on music education in South Africa. Schools were racially segregated in 1953, and musical study was often denied to black students. When black students did eventually have the opportunity to receive an academic music education, it followed a ‘West is best’ rule: Western classical music was regarded as a worthy subject of study, while indigenous South African music was treated as inferior. Following apartheid, a newly centralised education system in the country strove to incorporate music from both Africa and India, but these efforts often drew on non-Western music in a limited, even tokenistic, way.

Since most of the RBC student teachers involved in Arco are European, it is easy to see how questions of healthy cultural exchange and cross-racial cooperation are important. To understand these issues better, and to reflect on how Arco can address them, RBC launched a research project in 2018. Through interviews and lesson observations, my colleagues and I explored the experience of working within Arco. This research, detailed fully in a 2021 report available at bit.ly/2ZHxcFl, offers some important findings on how teachers and pupils confronted the challenges of this transcontinental partnership.

NEGOTIATING ROLES

One issue that teachers from both countries discussed was the challenge of establishing clear roles for members of each teaching team. When Arco was founded, student teachers became part of a partnership with South African students’ local teachers. One MICM teacher commented, ‘We had to put two totally different teaching styles together and make it work, and that is a big challenge.’ Different teams negotiated the situation in different ways. Sometimes, each teacher operated independently. Often, however, each teacher settled into instructing a distinct domain: one might teach repertoire while the other dealt with scales and etudes, for instance. An RBC student teacher worried that, ‘At the start I was trying to do exactly the same as the other teacher would be doing,’ but noted how their team met with success by establishing clearer, distinct teaching duties.

Even when teachers separated their responsibilities, a common approach had to be found. This sense of shared purpose took work and, most of all, communication, said one MICM teacher, who found that their partnership was successful ‘because we communicate very well’. The young string students were ‘learning the same things [from their RBC student teacher] that I’m teaching them so it’s actually working very nicely’. This kind of cooperation is essential because it results in more efficient teaching. More importantly, though, it can ensure that students benefit from different perspectives, and that the student can see both perspectives as equal.

Arco co-founder Peggy Nolan gives an in-person cello lesson to Tlotlo Mncube

Cello student Tshegofatso Mfazi performs in the MICM courtyard

TEACHER–STUDENT INTERACTION

Relationships between teachers were not the only ones that required some careful negotiation. RBC student teachers and their South African students had to build trusting, successful relationships online through videoconferencing software. The research confirmed some unsurprising trends. Conversation across these media was difficult; audio quality was unpredictable; there were time lags. Student teachers found that they had to rely on questions with short answers, making more extensive dialogue difficult. These sometimes one-sided conversations ran the risk of short-changing students’ own voices. Adding to this issue, many RBC student teachers relied on the master–apprentice instructional model that they themselves had experienced, a model that can further suppress student voices – yet in a project such as this, ensuring that students have a voice in their education is vitally important. Finding a way to foster dialogue became a key priority for Arco.

COOPERATION ENSURES THAT STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES, AND THAT THEY CAN SEE BOTH PERSPECTIVES AS EQUAL

CULTURAL TENSIONS

The challenges faced by teachers expose a deeper issue. The blending of two cultures always presents difficulties. And the fact that Arco is operating as an educational project in post-apartheid South Africa means that cultural differences are especially important to notice and address. Differences, and even tensions, could be seen in all aspects of the Arco project.

One South African teacher noted that Western classical instruments were sometimes viewed as ‘foreign to our culture’. Similarly, using Western repertoire in teaching posed issues of cultural relevancy. However, by the time the research report was written, Arco had already begun to address these sensitive issues. As one MICM teacher put it:

I always tell my students: ‘A story is a story – it doesn’t matter what culture or whatever. If your craft is to tell stories… you have to learn to tell that story.’ After all, we are not a cultural group; we are here to practise a craft. The kids play enough South African music in the centre, which I’m very proud of. We’ve done quite a lot of locally relevant music.

String playing is about more than technique or standard repertoire. It is, for this teacher, about telling stories, and students certainly benefit from the opportunity to tell their own musical stories. Teachers benefit, too, and while this research project progressed, Arco festivals began to incorporate more South African music, which UK student teachers learnt by rote.

One MICM teacher’s response to an interview question exposed a more fraught issue. They reflected on how, ‘When we first started Arco I found it was a bit of a racial thing and I know I wasn’t the only one having that same problem.’ This teacher observed that: ‘The kids for some reason kind of felt that the [UK-based] Arco teachers knew what they were doing better than we [South African teachers]’ – many of whom had had strong training as players and teachers. Countless assumptions and concerning biases are bound up in this observation. What is most important is how deep certain biases can run: students were reaching assumptions that one culture produced better teachers even without those assumptions being suggested or reinforced by their teachers.

Arco, like all music education programmes, draws heavily on cultural norms and practices such as repertoire, performance traditions and pedagogies. String students can be ‘taught’ certain beliefs with or without their teachers. It is up to projects like Arco and its teams of teachers to question any assumptions and create a real, meaningful partnership. What became clear from this research project is that the programme works best when knowledge and expertise can be exchanged in all directions, among equals. When knowledge and ideas flowed in only one direction, teaching was less coherent and diverse voices could become sidelined. But as teachers and student teachers uncovered ways to solve these problems, various perspectives mingled to give students a unique experience of learning to play stringed instruments.

Clockwise from top left RBC student teacher Emily Dore and violin pupil Nontebeko Hlongwane; Arco co-founder Lucy Nolan and Njabulo Nxumalo (before he took up the bass); intense concentration from violin student Mbali Phato; fellow violin student Mabatho Xulu works on her bowing technique

PHOTOS JAN REPKO

THE ARCO RESEARCH PROJECT SHOWED HOW STRING TE ACHERS CAN REFLECT ON THE CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS AND BIASES THEY BRING IN ORDER TO BECOME BETTER EDUCATORS

The pandemic has meant that there has not been any opportunity for travel since 2019, forcing both UK- and South Africa-based teachers and students to work solely online. This enforced online existence has been a particular challenge for the Arco students as not all have had access to the internet or the financial means to purchase access during the various lockdowns. Arco has responded to this situation and tried wherever possible to provide financial means or the chance for students to connect online to continue lessons and participate in Arco concerts, Q&As and performance classes.

Connecting online with many brilliant South African musicians was a hallmark of 2020 Arco activities, in addition to building a library of music written by African and black composers. These online activities naturally encouraged student voices and greater interaction between students and teachers. Not being able to connect with one another face to face has been a challenge, but this has also helped to refine and condense our communication and teaching methods. Arco students have begun communicating more readily, and taking more responsibility for lessons and practice. An even greater value is now placed by some students on their instrumental lessons and the role it plays in their lives. An appreciation of and curiosity about the rich and diverse cultural traditions in both countries is now a strength of Arco – one that enriches and informs pedagogy, but even more importantly, enhances the communication and process of working together in this long-term cross-continental collaboration.

We have expanded to include woodwind, brass and vocal students and teachers in the project, and are supporting three Arco students in full-time music education: two in the UK, at RBC and the Purcell School, and a third at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. We have also started a similar project with the Sunshine Orchestra based in Chennai, India.

These changes come at an important time. Music education has a role to play in bringing inclusiveness, equity and racial justice into education, and technology is enabling more far-reaching partnerships like Arco. The Arco research project has not only revealed some of the hurdles involved, but also showed how string teachers can reflect on the cultural assumptions and biases they bring in order to become better educators. Critical reflection – and making decisions to act on that reflection – can help ensure that music education as a field is not complacent, but instead helps to improve students’ lives. Many more questions remain about how string pedagogy can contribute to this effort, making open, collaborative partnerships like Arco all the more important.

Huge thanks to Daniel Galbreath, Kirsty Devaney and Alistair Rutherford for their incredible research, tenacity and wordsmith skills.