Being Open To The Possibility Of Greatness – the Vitality of Inspiration in Music Education

Those words were carefully chosen, because we walk a pretty precarious tightrope when teaching, with the twin pitfalls of perpetually infantilising the students by getting them used to jumping through hoops to pass exams as though passing was really what this was about (rather than passing being a benchmark of what they’ve actually achieved) and laying absurd expectations on them that nothing in their creative lives will be worthwhile if they aren’t ‘famous’.

So the idea of exploring the possibility of greatness is to create space in which the ideas that surround ‘greatness’ can be unpacked in a way that invites them to define and pursue it within the context of their studies. If your course is actively steering musicians away from the sense that they can measure greatness as something other than mainstream success, towards a wholly mechanised/corporatised understanding of ‘making it’, it’s probably time to change the course – that was never a particularly useful strategy, but the time period in which it even made sense professionally ended before the current crop of Degree first years were born. Those fumes need expunging from the system…

But, the invitation to make extraordinary work HAS to be built in. Nothing should ever come with the expectation that perfunctory, mundane, tired work is something they should consider to be a good use of their time. Again, this doesn’t mean that the interim steps to them making incredible work don’t count, it’s just that you can be falteringly heading towards great work, refining your vision, your process, your skills and your perspective, or you can become satisfied with doing the minimum required to pass an exam, as though making intentionally mediocre art isn’t a tragic and offensive notion.

I look at what some of the third years at BIMM have done over the last couple of years [2019-2021, but there are later examples too ], and how many of the seeds of their incredible work were visible in their hunger to be great right at the start. My experience at Kidderminster College earlier in the 2010s was very similar – we encouraged students to reach for their best, to say what they wanted to say and to create in extravagant, celebratory ways, to throw their voice out into the world.

It’s not remotely a bad thing to prepare students for professional life, it’s deeply important to understand the mechanisms of the music economy (while also being vital to critique their efficacy in connecting specific forms of art/entertainment to the people who are looking for it), but it’s SO important that that stuff is explored in a way that is complimentary to them being encouraged to make their best work and to be proud of the results of their hard work, dedication, focus and ability to experiment, refine, iterate and then release (or perform!) work.

Perhaps the single most important inspiration students can receive in this context is their teachers doing the same thing. If we are jaded former-pros, teaching because we ran out of options, they’ll inherit that. I’ve encountered a significant number of teachers like that across the last 30 years and it breaks my heart that someone’s journey into music would be poisoned by the cynicism of someone who stopped attempting to create anything worthwhile when the student’s parents were still at school.

I’m so inspired by colleagues and friends who are making records, putting bands together, learning new skills, trying out mad shit to see what happens. One of the joys of being a teacher is that the money from it buys you space to do NEW things that you don’t need to make money from immediately (assuming you’re not so knackered from a week of teaching you can’t pick up an instrument or a mic!)