2001 NACTMUS Conference
Byron Bay: June 30- July 2, 2001
Creating Musical Futures:
Challenges to Music Education in the 21st Century
Abstracts of papers
Byron Bay: June 30- July 2, 2001
Creating Musical Futures:
Challenges to Music Education in the 21st Century
The Map is not the Territory: Towards a cooperative approach to the future development of orchestras in Australia
by Gavin Findlay
These are exciting, but dangerous, times for the Australian art music/orchestral scene. The last few years have seen numerous changes of great magnitude. The advent of Symphony Australia, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the Nugent Report (to name but three of the biggest) have all changed the landscape of our artform dramatically. Whether these particular changes are for the better only time will tell, but it does point to one very important fact &endash; that our "industry" is under regular government scrutiny and will remain so, given the amounts of money involved.
The flavour of the government of the time is irrelevant. The point is that at some point in the future, the Federal Government will say to itself: "this is a significant industry, which consumes significant amounts of public funding. Why is there not an industry strategy?"
Why indeed? Despite being practitioners of an artform that is founded upon working together, we have been floundering through a morass of disunity. The last decade has seen us even descend on occasion to all-out warfare between tertiary institutions, community organisations and professional bodies. We're forced to structure our enterprises competitively, so it's understandable (let's put the rest down to artistic temperamentÉ). The tendency to territorialism may never be completely overcome, but we must try, and now.
Over the last three years, the major state and territory youth orchestra organisations and the Australian Youth Orchestra have established a viable network that also includes the Australian Music Centre and The Orchestras Australia Network (TOAN). With a little help from the Australia Council, Youth Orchestras Australia (YOA) was born in 1999, and continues to hold quarterly phone conferences and an annual meeting with the secretariat function provided by the Australian Youth Orchestra. Its formation was inspired in significant measure by the success of Ausdance, and the broader music field can also learn much from this model.
To sketch it briefly, Ausdance serves the entire dance community, from baby ballerinas and folk dance to the major professional companies. It has an executive officer in each state and a national secretariat, governed by an elected national council. Over the years it has undertaken extensive advocacy, commissioned a huge body of research, run many events and festivals both at national and state levels, and over 20 years has gradually worked towards establishing national teaching standards and accreditation. It has very strong ties with the tertiary dance schools. The Australia Council has funded the Ausdance national secretariat since 1985.
We can, and must, have the same for music. TOAN has been attempting to do so for the orchestral field, but support for TOAN from some key institutions has been patchy at best. The situation is similar for organisations like the Australian Music Centre and the Music Council of Australia. Ausdance was formed from a national forum in 1977, and music is well overdue to have the same collective national voice. The Music Council of Australia, in particular, under Dick Letts has established a significant voice for development and dissemination of policy. It is time to rexamine the current infrastructure, and look at partnerships and resource-sharing in order to establish a national art music/orchestral advocacy and support organisation with state and territory offices.
YOA has identified several key priority areas for policy development in its own field, which have been delegated to network members:
1. establishment of national network including information sharing, touring and planning, and artist sharing
2. marketing and research
3. a national Youth Orchestra Festival, sponsorship research and initiatives
4. outreach and training &endash; liaison with the profession, especially Symphony Australia
5. relationship with education and teaching sectors
6. commissioning and repertoire
7. government liaison and funding processes
So far, YOA has met with representatives of key institutions including Peta Williams and Carin Mistry (Australia Council), Professor Gillian Wills (former Chair of NACTMUS), Professor Frank Wibaut (ANAM), Nathan Waks (Music Fund/Symphony Australia), Nigel Sabin (Music Fund/SA Score-reading panel) and Derek Watt (Symphony Australia). These meetings have shown promise significant new levels of co-operation between the YOA organisations and these institutions.
One of the major concerns of the YOA membership has been the lack of formal recognition and accreditation of the value of it members' work by other key institutions, especially the tertiary teaching institutions and the professional symphony orchestras, and the opportunities for resource sharing and strategic development going begging as a result. While it is widely, if anecdotally, accepted that youth orchestras play a vital role in the development of future professional orchestral musicians and ensemble players, the state youth orchestra organisations seem to be perceived in some quarters as annoying magpies trying to steal precious resources, or even as direct competition. In response, YOA is undertaking research to quantify the impact of its members' activities on the profession, as a means of demonstrating the significance of youth orchestra participation.
It's interesting to observe the relationships between the tertiary music schools and the major state and territory youth orchestra organisations. It sheds some interesting light on the question of what it is that the tertiary music schools are actually training people for.
There are two main fields of specialist employment for music graduates in Australia. One is as professional performers, of which the principal employers are Symphony Australia, Opera Australia and the Armed Forces. The other is of course the education system. In neither case does a standard B.Mus. performance degree actually qualify you for a job - the performers can have all the degrees they want but won't get the orchestra job without passing the audition, and to get work as anything other than an instrumental teacher in schools requires an additional education qualification.
So what is the B.Mus. performance degree actually for? It certainly can't possibly be characterised as a broad liberal arts education in the traditional sense, although a number of tertiary schools have certainly broadened the scope of their curriculum in recent times. I believe a significant majority of students enter these institutions with the ambition of becoming professional orchestral players. How well are they being served, and do the tertiary schools actually run coherent orchestral training programs? First of all we must assume that such training requires the formation of an orchestra within the school. That's often much more difficult than it might first appear.
Simple logistics often conspire to get in the way. Many more kids learn wind and brass instruments than strings. In Canberra, this results in a situation where there are three teachers of violin and viola, a capacity of about thirty to forty students which is a respectable size for orchestral upper string section. At the same time the wind teachers have about ten students each. Obviously the string players are required for every call of the school's orchestra while the poor old winds and brass have to be rostered and may only get one concert with the School orchestra each year. This benefits the Canberra Youth Orchestra enormously, as the tertiary wind and brass students scramble over each other for places in order to get the orchestral experience they need. Surely this situation suggests that participation in the community-based orchestra be recognised in their studies.
In Western Australia the existence of two tertiary schools has also benefited the West Australian Youth Orchestra for a number of years. The two schools vigorously compete for a limited pool of students with the result that neither school has sufficient students to form a respectable orchestra; the bulk of the students then join WAYO to overcome this.. The situation varies greatly in other states, but overall one is left with a distinct sense that there is no coherence or even broad agreement as to how best to train our future orchestral professionals, and a huge inconsistency on how to value the state youth orchestras that play such an important role. The conclusion from the above can only be that the answer lies in developing a national orchestral training curriculum in full cooperation with the youth orchestras, the education sector and Symphony Australia.
What of the question of the standard of the graduates being produced? As recently as last month, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was not satisfied for a single domestic candidate for any of four Tutti Double Bass positions. There is a commonly held belief that the overall standard of our graduates still doesn't cut it in world terms, something that is supposed to be addressed by the existence of the Australian National Academy of Music. Well, I'm sorry, but it's like polishing bricks. Unless we address the quality of music education from the bottom up, and unless we start collectively lobbying government for increases in funding to all levels of music education, schemes like ANAM are a waste of money. And unless we have a coherent vision to present to Government, they're not going to listen.
One of the objections I have heard voiced about cooperation between tertiary music departments with the flagship youth orchestra organisations is that somehow this would sully the academic integrity of the school. This is manifestly false, given that most of the youth orchestras employ tertiary teaching staff extensively and could not possibly succeed without the input of these staff to their programs. It is also deeply ironic given that there exists neither a national body for accreditation and teaching standards for tertiary institutions nor for the music profession as a whole.
Importantly, in 2001 the expectations on the flagship youth arts organisations for professionalised management structures are very high. Canberra Youth Music is treated by the ACT Government in exactly the same fashion as any professional arts organisation with requirements for business plans, marketing plans, sponsorship plans, and the meeting of performance targets.
Youth arts organisations have successfully adapted over a long period of time to the conditions imposed by severe restrictions on government funding. It is critical to remember that the vast majority of youth music organisations are grass-roots, dependent on volunteer support, and in many cases have histories pre-dating many tertiary music departments. They have achieved remarkable results in terms of fundraising and sponsorship as well as very lean and efficient administrative structures, often founded on the work of parent volunteers. There is simply no good reason why the state youth orchestra organisations could not provide some services to the tertiary institutions on a purchaser-provider basis, in exactly the same fashion as is now being expected of tertiary institutions. If the contract is not delivered on, it is terminated.
Now, what of the role of Australia Council in all of this, which many look to as the body to represent elite arts to Government, and articulate strategic direction? YOA member organisations have contributed extensively to the Australia Council's Youth and the Arts Framework process that resulted in the setting up a Youth Panel managed by the Council's Strategy and Policy department. Results of the Youth Panel's work have yet to be seen, but there is good reason to think there will be long-term benefits. It is, however, worth revisiting the core of YOA's submission to the original Framework process:
"Éthe Framework will be useless if it fails to address the nexus between professional artists, community-based youth arts, and the education system in total, and produce strategies which address the realities of these relationships."
There is no doubt that in recent years, the Australia Council has responded much more readily to feedback from artists and organisations, and has facilitated some large-scale strategic developments across all artforms. It is such co-ordination and facilitation which will be vital in securing national levels of dialogue and communication amongst players in the music sector who have been reluctant to come to the table thus far. The Australia Council is probably the only institution that has the prestige, the authority, and the duty to make this happen.
The Council has, I believe, now accepted this duty, as was well-illustrated in Dr Margaret Seares' recent farewell speech at the National Press Club. I believe she was the right person for the job at the right time, and having an academic at the helm has contributed greatly to the Australia Council's breadth of thinking. The research commissioned during her tenure has clarified a number of murky issues. These are my favourites:
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
The Australia Council and some tertiary music schools have made laudable efforts to come to terms with the paradox of how to show support for popular music without opening the floodgates and thereby having to spread precious funds among the "fifteen million fingers learning how to play". It's not a part of the artform that necessarily requires huge amounts of funding &endash; Savage Garden probably earns more than the entire Australia Council budget, maybe they'll start giving out their own grants &endash; but there can be no doubt that the art music/orchestral scene still denies the artistic legitimacy of pop music and therefore is ill-prepared to share with it. The Commonwealth Government's solution is apparently to call it "youth culture" and put it in a separate box called a LOUD or NOISE Festival.
When &endash; and not if &endash; a national music forum is convened, it should be inclusive of pop/commercial musicians, promoters and recording companies.
The Canberra Experiment
I'm pleased to say that in the ACT we are seeing the beginnings of the cooperation between all sectors of the music profession. Professor Fraillon of the Canberra School of Music is fully aware of the value of Canberra Youth Music, and she and I have recently agreed both on collective lobbying in advance of the ACT elections and the setting up of a broad forum to discuss the future of music education. The new General Manager of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Ian McLean, has worked extensively as a conductor and tutor for CYM over the years and within two weeks of his appointment had approved all of the cooperation initiatives between the CSO and CYM that his predecessor had ignored for four years. Together with a range of community organisations, we have all begun the lengthy process of contacting each and every music teacher and school in the ACT to discuss how we may better work together.
Of course, this is a much bigger task in most states, and it is pleasing to hear of some exciting development along these lines, although the mere thought of tackling the gargantuan NSW Education Department causes migraines. We will eventually succeed in Canberra, have no fear. The recent Cultural Ministers' Council statistics showed that no less than 22% of all ACT school children learn a musical instrument. That's a lot of parental support we can count on.
In conclusion, I ask the audience's indulgence for the little conceit of the title of this paper. For those not familiar with the field of General Semantics, it refers to the constant process of abstraction by which we map our world. The trick, however, is not to confuse the map for reality. Far too many in the field of music in Australia are set in their ways and believe that there is only one right way to play, or teach. We must accept that in a field as diverse as music there will never be complete agreement. But we all share this common passion, and must now all create a vision for the future of music-making in Australia, which can also be shared.
Of course there is a measure of self-interest in all this. The YOA member organisations are all run by experienced professionals, who are employed to undertake strategic planning and identify who to lobby. But is it hugely significant that these same professionals include a large number of former members of youth orchestras, who are in absolutely no doubt of the real significance of the youth orchestras and will do everything in their power to ensure these organisations thrive, grow, and take their rightful place in the collective vision for music.
Biographical Note
Gavin Findlay is Director of Canberra Youth Music Inc. CYM is the parent body of the Canberra Youth Orchestra as well as thirteen other orchestras, choirs and concert bands, with a total enrolment of four hundred students. These groups rehearse on a weekly basis, undertake annual camps and tours, and gave some 90 performances last year in the ACT and surrounding region. Canberra Youth Music also manages the new Ainslie Arts Centre, a youth and community music centre established by the ACT Government.
Gavin has a wide range of experience as an artist and administrator, having been formerly:
Gavin is also currently studying for the degree of Master of Philosophy (by research) at the Canberra School of Music, in which he is undertaking a critical study of the vectors affecting policy making by youth music organisations in Australia.