In this post, Ben shares key questions to ask when taking on a long-term workforce development programme, based on learning from Drake Music’s five-year partnership with Kawasaki City and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra
“What can you say, when a love affair is over?” – ‘Insensatez’, Robert Wyatt
Day one of this year’s Irioroneiro project in Kawasaki, Japan, and Soichi-san from the city council sat me down in a back room. Through a translator he explained “Ben, you should know that this is the last year that you will lead this project. We feel we have the skills to do it within the team next year. So, please share with us everything you have”.
The news was both sad and satisfying. We had started the project in 2019 as part of the British Council’s ‘UK in Japan’ programme, tying in with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. After some initial practitioner training sessions and the 2021 Kawasaki Suite composition project, the focus had shifted to long term capacity building in Kawasaki, Japan’s ‘City of Music’.
Between 2022 and 2024 this took the form of ‘Irioroneiro Jam’, or ‘many colours jam’, an annual hybrid training/delivery project that brought together six musicians from Kawasaki Jazz festival and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra to form a temporary ensemble and delivery team. Each year began with online prep sessions and a day or two of in-person training with the musician facilitators. We then welcomed 25 residents of Kawasaki – all ages, all needs, all backgrounds – for a day of collective music making; first listening to the band, then joining it. Exploring sounds, composing, rehearsing, community building. Each project would end with a performance in a public space, a chance for Disabled and non-Disabled people, old and young, professional and amateur, to perform shoulder to shoulder.
Each year had its own flavour, with some new musicians and some returning. Repertoire chosen for emotive power, accessibility, beauty and groove, from Mas Que Nada to Take the ‘A’ Train to the gorgeous Ue o Muite, written by Kyu Sakamoto, a Kawasaki native.
By our third iteration in October 2024 we were a tight team, and I agreed with Soichi-san: we had done what we needed to do. Firstly, create a team of facilitators in Kawasaki who felt confident and skilled to lead workshops based on the Drake Music approach. Secondly and of equal importance, we had been part of a collective shift in the discourse around disability and inclusion in the various Japanese partner organisation, ensuring that the wider mission of improving inclusive practice and attitudes to disability in the city would continue.
The process has been a real challenge for me, very much pushing at the edges of my practice, as I seek to communicate the heart of what I do with few words in a very different cultural context, attempting to meet big expectations with (as ever) not quite enough time.
Previous blog posts discuss the composition and improvisation elements of the partnership. This blog takes the form of a series of questions that I believe are foundational to building a successful workforce development project:
1. What do we want to change?
2. What is the context of what we are doing?
3. How can we build on existing strengths?
4. How can we share power?
5. How can we embody the atmosphere we want to create?
In another time and place and with another brief the answers may change, but the questions are transferrable and hopefully are of value to colleagues undertaking projects in the near and far.
1. What do we want to change?
This is the first question I ask when planning any project, and the first thing I share with colleagues. The impact we wanted Iroironero Jam to have was multi-layered:
For our participants, we wanted to create a feeling of empowerment and connection, and inspiration to continue music-making in whatever form.
For our facilitators, we wanted to increase confidence and skills and to be able to run similar projects autonomously in the future.
For the audience that watched the eventual performance, we wanted to demonstrate the value of diversity: the reality (obvious to us, but not to everyone) that everyone can express themselves and take a valuable role in a creative community.
We also wanted to create tight, beautiful music whilst maintaining a sense of ease and joy throughout: a moment-to-moment balance of process and product. And if we set sail with these outcomes, we could be confident that other would bubble up:
“The fun of improvisation is not in the actual performance, but in the practice the day before and the process of creating it, and that time was very precious. The actual performance was a prepared improvisation, but the interaction with the audience and unexpected happenings (rain and leaks) reduced the tension by half.” – 2023 Participant feedback (translated)
It was totally wonderful watching older (and often socially isolated) participants having musical fun with the young’uns. And it felt like we had hit the jackpot when a returning participant in her 60s proudly announced that she had formed a band with some of the other participants in the intervening year.
2. What is the context of what we are doing?
Young people with additional learning needs exist in an ecosystem of musical interactions. As project lead, it was important for me to understand as much about this ecosystem in order to be of most value to participants and also to identify additional cohorts to train.
Japan has a strong network of day centres for Disabled adults, and we provided training and workshops in these settings. In 2023 I also had the pleasure of touring two schools, a special education school and a mainstream primary school. Aside from learning that the food in the canteen is excellent, the staff are amazing, and learning to unicycle is on the curriculum of most elementary schools, I also observed a lesson in which a pupil from a special education school was integrated part time into the mainstream school during music lessons. This trial had been set up by the city council, the equivalent of a UK LEA, and was a testament to the commitment the city council had to experimenting with different approaches to inclusion. Interestingly, school planning is centralised, so all pupils work from the same textbooks across Japan, including in music.
3. How can we build on existing strengths?
Our team was made up of a mixture of classical and jazz musicians, some of the best in the business. One of these, Masato-san, is the principle trumpet player in the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, a monster of a player, but was at first very reticent to improvise. After some discussions, it became clear that it was ‘improvising over the chord changes’ that was the block, rather than improvising in itself. In response, I chose the Esma Redžepova’s Čaje Šukarije for him to take the spotlight. It has a rubato introduction over four slowly changing chords that would allow his beautiful tone and dexterity to shine, without having to worry about which notes to play. Over the course of the four days he grew and grew into the music, and his powerful, deeply emotive solo during the final performance reflected this liberating journey.
Regarding participants, one way to work out individual strengths in a short amount of time is by giving them plenty of autonomy to explore and have musical ‘scribble time’, with facilitators observing and figuring out how their strengths can be brought into the music. Some participants might enjoy learning a melody and sticking to it. Others gravitate towards soloing, others conducting, others providing musical textures. It is the skill (and joy) of the facilitator to bring these together into a cohesive whole, aware of when a participant may like a new challenge, but also giving plenty of space for depth and flow to develop.
4. How can we share power?
Nelson Mandela talks about good leadership being like a shepherd leading from the back of the flock. She allows the nimble, adventurous sheep to find the path up the hill, and focuses her attention on ensuring that no sheep is left behind. Once I knew that this would be my last project, it became even more of a priority to give space for colleagues to grow whilst ensuring they remained in a space of ease and joy. In the final performance I conducted our two large ensemble pieces, letting others do pretty much everything else.
Similarly, one key learning over the three years was the importance of giving an option for participants to compose their own pieces, rather than adapting existing repertoire. This meant that our chosen repertoire was suggested, rather than imposed, and the new compositions were consistently the most exciting and innovative element of each performance.
5. How can we embody the atmosphere we want to create?
[I enjoyed the facilitation] because he enjoyed the music more than anyone else and created an atmosphere to build it together. – Participant feedback (translated), 2023
I want to create an atmosphere that is relaxed yet energised and focussed, curious and collaborative. Sometimes we may not feel any of these things, and we may be able to ‘fake’ it to some extent, but our body language, tone of voice, pacing and musical choices will always give away where we are at as individual facilitators to everyone in the room.
It is really important, therefore, to spend time checking in to find out what is going on in our emotional world, especially if we are working close to (or beyond) our capacity, and to prepare our mind and body as much as possible. Everyone has different ways to do this. For me, this means stretching my body, abstaining from alcohol and caffeine before and during a project, and making sure I keep drinking water and eating nourishing food throughout (not a problem in Japan).
I have also developed a meditation practice for the mornings of a big project. It involves bringing to mind the people I am going to work with in the day – myself, colleagues, participants and audiences. I reflect on the journeys that have brought us all together and the gift of each individual’s time: what an amazing and fortuitous set of events that have manifested in us being here together, right here and right now. If I am feeling nervous I figure out where I am feeling it in the body (often my chest or stomach), and breathe into that part, loosening it, before breathing it out particle by particle. It is surprisingly effective.
Then, just before the project starts, everything set up, alone or with the team, I/we find a quiet corner, take a few breaths, relax each muscle in my/our bodies, smile, and we are ready to go.
But Japan though…
All of the above is mere detail compared to the things that will stay with me the most from the project: the incredible team I worked with, the phenomenal standard of their musicianship, and their collective dedication to developing inclusive practice in Kawasaki. The project feels complete, and new challenges will sweep all of us back into the current, but there always will be a piece of my heart that will remain in Kawasaki.
