Did the students benefit? Absolutely! They were given more freedom than in the conventional classroom set-up and more time than is usually possible. They were made to think for themselves and as there were no pre-conceived ideas about the structure or content of the music they were free to explore their own ideas and were given enough time to develop these.

At first the students were unsure as to what was expected of them from this new approach but they soon adapted and responded well.  As they gained confidence they took the work more seriously and learnt how to interact as a whole group.  Noticeably some of the more immature individuals began to appreciate the benefits of teamwork and one of the more pleasing outcomes was that some of the lads with poor social skills started to treat the ideas and opinions of others with more tolerance more of the time.  Musically the members of the group became increasingly concerned with the quality of the work produced and took more care as the project progressed.  The amount of commitment from the whole group to the final recording of ideas was impressive.

We would certainly use this approach within the College where there is time allocated for activity days, etc.