The Resonaari music school

The Special Music Centre Resonaari¹, situated in Helsinki, Finland, has been a pioneer in experimenting with what an alternative music school would look like, based on its pedagogy, policy, and targeted student population. It offers an interesting counter-narrative within the music school system in Finland by challenging the selective pyramid model of music schools in general, whilst not abandoning the goal-oriented and pedagogical ambitions. Indeed, for many of its students, Resonaari has been the only music school to grant them access and open up possibilities for goal-oriented music education, and even in some cases striving to attain professional musicianship.

Having started as a small project in 1995, and slowly growing and becoming an established music school, Resonaari received its official music school status from the National Board of Education in 2004, allowing them to follow the extended syllabus within the Basic Education in the Arts. While it has the official music school status, Resonaari does not receive state share funding; rather, the music school is mainly funded by student fees, private sponsors, and a small subsidy from the City of Helsinki.

Resonaari consists of a music school and a research and development unit that promotes music education through a strong emphasis on inclusion and accessibility. The music school has approximately 270 students and employs a dozen music instrument teachers (situation in 2016) who provide individual and group teaching in music. The emphasis of the music school is on popular music practices in ‘garage band’ settings, and the most popular instruments among the students are piano/keyboards, electric bass, guitar, and drums. Many students play the range of instruments, depending both on their personal preferences and pedagogically apt choices made by the teacher. Most of the students have enrolled in Resonaari because they have not been able to study music through the conventional methods used in other music schools, for example, due to specific needs related to the physical or cognitive characteristics that the other music schools have been ignorant of or unable to respond to. The age range of the students is wide, varying from pre-school aged children to senior citizens. One of the crucial policy factors that enables Resonaari to execute the extended syllabus with students with varying learning paces is the so-called individualization clause within the advanced syllabus of the Act and Decree on Basic Education in the

1 http://www.helsinkimissio.fi/resonaari/international

Arts (Opetushallitus, 2002), which prescribes the possibility to individualize the learning goals and teaching structure according to the student’s needs. The teachers plan and evaluate the progress and processes of the music learning structures and their students individually. This demands a somewhat interpretive and innovative approach to the standardized evaluation guidelines, as for a majority of Resonaari’s students advancing in music studies is often unpredictable and slower than is usually the case. Thus, the governmental authorities at the National Board of Education need to be convinced of student progress and the efficacious teaching structure by different means than strict curriculum and evaluation-based goals.

Figure 1. Figurenotes

The research and development unit was established within the music school in 2001, to document the continuous experimental work that is characteristic of Resonaari’s operational strategy. Indeed, from very outset Resonaari has been linked to the development of Figurenotes², a notation system based on colors and shapes, that enables reading music without earlier knowledge in music theory (figure 1.).

The research and development work has included the further development and testing of Figurenotes, including embossing Figurenotes for students with visual impairment, and also producing teaching material in other languages, including Estonian, Italian, and Japanese among others (Kaikkonen & Uusitalo, 2005).

2 http://www.figurenotes.org

In addition, other projects related more widely to accessible and inclusive music education have been launched, under the umbrella name Everybody Plays.

The projects include, among others, a model for senior citizens’ rock band music education and a Playing Friend voluntary work model for supporting Resonaari students’ music making outside the music school settings. All the projects have been funded by the Slot Machine Association (RAY), which grants non-profit health and social welfare investments and projects in Finland on the basis of annual applications and reports on previous projects. After granted with funding for a number of single projects by RAY, Resonaari received an ongoing grant for its yearly budget to ensure the continuity of running the music school (figure 2.). In addition to the project initiatives, Resonaari’s research and development unit organizes professional development courses, workshops, and seminars where the participants usually consist of music educators, music therapists, and social workers among others.

Figure 2. Resonaari’s timeline

Resonaari got its start in the early 1990s, after the meeting of two key persons in its development, Markku Kaikkonen and Kaarlo Uusitalo. Kaarlo Uusitalo is a musician and music therapist who started to explore innovating new pedagogical tools for teaching music to his clients, eventually resulting in the formation of the Figurenotes system in early 1990s. Markku Kaikkonen has a background as a renowned early childhood music educator, and was recruited to collaborate with Kaarlo Uusitalo to start up Resonaari with the help of lecturer Petri Lehikoinen at the Sibelius Academy, the social welfare organization HelsinkiMissio, and project funding from RAY. The underlying idea was to establish an institution around the developmental work of Figurenotes, simultaneously providing a place where everyone, from children to adults, could play and learn music – a center of both practice-based activity (music school) - and a development unit that would also provide a network for professionals working with music in cross-disciplinary fields.

Today Resonaari music school is located in a comfy house in a quiet residential area of eastern Helsinki. The school itself, however, is a busy site, where students coming to lessons and spending time with their friends and family blend with frequent visitors from different institutions, such as student groups from schools;

students and researchers from music education, social work, and nursing; musicians and volunteer workers; and media representatives. Resonaari’s teachers are continuously developing ideas: planning and carrying out collaborative initiatives that promote the students’ possibilities to make and learn music outside the school settings, such as producing an annual gala concert where the students perform together with Finnish top artists; organizing workshops for teaching Figurenotes to parents and caregivers in order to enable them to support practicing at home;

organizing events inside and outside the music schools where the students get to perform regularly; helping the students to create their own music; innovating and making use of technology in music making, and so on. Resonaari’s unique and in many ways imaginative use of both policy and pedagogical innovations in a community of dedicated teachers and motivated students foreground the inspiration for this research project.