"It is a fact that music does empower children," says Danielle Spencer. "Sometimes it's the only way children can connect because they've been so hurt by what they've experienced in their young lives."

LET THE CHILDREN PLAY

Justine Bashford meets the passionate, underpaid people helping Australian kids to acquire rhythm, melody and an appreciation of beauty.

The office consists of two small rooms in an old office block in North Sydney. The furniture is standard, and the computers appear to be secondhand. The view from the window is over a shadowy laneway, although from where he's sitting, Don Spencer's view is much broader.

Spencer, a doyen of ABC TV's Play School , launched the Australian Children’s Music Foundation in 2002. It is run almost exclusively by volunteers, survives on government funding and philanthropy, and has touched the lives of thousands of children. It is just one of the organisations that is stepping into the gap left by education departments around the country, providing children with the crucial element of music in their upbringing.

"Music is the universal language that cuts across all socio-economic and racial barriers," says Spencer. After decades in the music business as a pop star and children’s entertainer, Spencer was saddened by the lack of musical opportunities for children in Australia. "I think music goes hand-in-hand with imagination, and imagination is a vital part of a child's development," he says. His daughter, singer/songwriter Danielle Spencer echoes this, adding, "Music has a soothing and calming influence and it's a great tool for focusing children’s energy."

As he sips a coffee - an upright piano behind him and a heavily autographed guitar against the wall - Spencer says he is determined to inspire children to participate in music. "Children should be participators not spectators," is his catchphrase. "Involvement is great for the child's development, teamwork - all manner of things," he adds.

Danielle, a patron of the ACMF, says she has often been his sounding board, discussing his ideas over dinner and long into the night. This doesn’t surprise me; in the hour I spent in his office he made it clear how passionate he was about this project.

"I'm extremely proud of him," she says. "It's an incredibly important thing he's doing. The ACMF is getting into areas where children don’t have money for instruments or lessons."

Danielle is aware of her good fortune. "I was lucky to be exposed to music from a young age," she says. "It's so important all children should have access to it. Now I'm a mother myself, I'm taking my son to music lessons. It's amazing to see the children banging drums and singing songs and participating."

Funding is provided by the Commonwealth Department of Education (which is currently undertaking a review into children’s music education), corporate sponsors and private donors, and patronage from the likes of the Wiggles, Dame Joan Sutherland and Jimmy Little.

Another patron, Australian Chamber Orchestra artistic director Richard Tognetti, says music "keeps kids' brains active".

"The most important thing is to keep them away from the television, whether they learn a language, or maths or ballet or music," he says. "Music should be available across the board." Not just music, but Australian music. Don and Danielle Spencer are passionate about ensuring that Australian children are not completely swamped by outside cultures. Says Don, “I’m very worried about the saturation of visuals. And 80 to 90 per cent of the visuals children see are foreign. We need to maintain our own culture and not be swamped by American TV shows. And because you can only get children’s music played on television, it means that the outlet for children’s music is very, very small."

The ACMF has been commissioned to make a series of children’s radio programs, and is hoping to establish a radio station devoted to children sometime in the future. It is also taking steps towards the foundation of a national children’s music library, so that anyone interested can find Australian children’s music, much of which becomes sidelined simply because those who would love to use it don’t know of its existence.

Danielle Spencer says, "The ACMF is trying to get music to all children, not just those who can afford it." She has accompanied her father to schools in the disadvantaged La Perouse area of Sydney, where the ACMF is bringing music to more than 300 primary school children. This project is driven by Fernando Zavarce, a gifted teacher and communicator who, for the past five months, entirely voluntarily, has taught the children theory. Zavarce's generosity and passion are remarkable - he struggles to get by on part-time and casual jobs.

"It's an amazing challenge," he says. "I'm teaching grades one to six. They are very young but they have amazing rhythm. Their musical potential is enormous."

Having raised enough money to buy instruments for the La Perouse project, now the ACMF must find teachers for various instruments. There's no money, but, says Zavarce, "It's exciting, difficult and beautiful. The kids want to learn, but actually, I am learning more from them than they are from me."

The majority of the children in the schools are from poor families, many of them Aboriginal. Some came to him and told him they were unable to participate in the project as their parents couldn’t afford instruments for them. Zavarce explained that everything provided by the ACMF was free. "They don’t believe it. It's an amazing thing we're doing."

Later this year, encouraged by Richard Gill, Director of Education at the Sydney Symphony, the ACMF has organised to take the children to see that orchestra play. Most of them have never been to the Sydney Opera House, let alone seen a full symphony orchestra.

Margie Moore, the Sydney Symphony's Education Manager, has seen children’s reaction to their first orchestral concert many times. "Children come to the top of the stairs and you can hear their intake of breath. The impact of walking into a concert hall is huge and stays with them. When they hear an orchestra for the first time, they can’t believe how loud it is. Some stick their fingers in their ears."

Moore oversees a range of programs for students from beginners through to university level. For the small children, concerts are held in the ABC's Eugene Goossens Hall, in Sydney, where a conductor presents the concerts, demonstrating the instruments and telling the stories behind the music.

Instead of taking children to the concert hall, Musica Viva takes ensembles to the classroom. It hires 39 groups - including an Irish folk group, a brass quartet, string quartets, an a capella trio and a wind trio across the country, taking music to about 2500 schools. In Queensland alone it has organised 200 concerts this year.

Queensland is the most ambitious state in this field. It is determined to employ as many specialist music teachers in schools as possible. Musica Viva supports them with a curriculum-focused program involving professional development for the teachers and bringing live music to the children.

OzOpera, the touring and educational arm of Opera Australia, takes opera for children to as many schools as it can. The ACO's Tognetti says its director of education, Richard Gill, is "one of the leading children’s music educators in the world".

OzOpera has a project that each year takes 40 children aged seven to 18 to work with an orchestra. They all sing in an opera that is eventually presented to the public. The program only has enough money to do this in Victoria, OzOpera's home state.

While the programs he runs are enormously popular, Gill says they are no substitute for specialist music teachers. He says the situation is dire in public schools. "You cannot expect a generalist teacher to also teach music, drama and dance," he says. "It is abject and stupid to force this on a teacher." Taught properly, he says, music enriches children’s lives in so many ways, enabling them to understand good, appreciate beauty and come to grips with truth. These perceptions lead to wisdom and the ability to make choices, as well as providing "extraordinary joy". And, as he says, "every child already has an instrument. Every child can and should learn to sing."

Apart from presenting low-cost concerts for school-age children, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra runs an Outreach program whereby musicians go to schools often those where only minimal music-making is taking place - and spend a day working with the children, exploring musical ideas, writing their own music and culminating in a concert before the whole school and any interested parents.

The program includes an element of professional development for the teachers as well, and schools are queuing to take part. Many of the teachers are generalists without much training in music teaching.

Outreach project facilitator Gillian Howell says, "We don’t use music notation unless the children already have the skills. We distill what makes a performance special - being part of an ensemble, listening, commitment and attention to detail. It's about the skill in coming together and working with others."

Schools may choose students with aptitude to participate, or they may select those who don’t usually shine in the classroom.

"Because we are strangers, they come to us with a clean slate - they have room to shine and to be a different person."

Howell's passion for communicating through music is evident. She tells of a day spent at a language school with recent immigrants and refugees. By the end of the day, the children sang songs they had written themselves with the orchestra. "I think they had a stronger sense of who they are, of pride and of resilience. They felt welcomed and accepted."
Acceptance is key for the children in detention taught by the ACMF. It currently reaches six juvenile detention centres and is about to expand to another two. With typical optimism and faith, Don Spencer hopes the ACMF will be visiting a total of 28 centres by the end this year.

"It's so rewarding," he says. "The reaction from the kids, the songs they've written - it's astonishing. Kids who, to begin with, were reluctant to let go and shy - they'd been hurt, disengaged. Gradually they come forward and start putting in a few words. We end up with a song and they've expressed themselves - they're so excited. You teach them a chord and they can’t believe that they've never played or held a guitar and made a chord. Some of these kids have nothing, and their backgrounds are so frightening."

The hurt is palpable in a CD the ACMF recently provided to its sponsors. The first two songs, written by children in juvenile detention centres, are called Cry No More and Lock Down . But there is hope. The third, written by 16-year-old Cath, contains the lyric: "There's nothing so broken it can't be repaired/By a kiss or a smile or a tear."

"It is a fact that music does empower children," says Danielle Spencer. "Sometimes it's the only way children can connect because they've been so hurt by what they've experienced in their young lives."

Don Spencer knows that many children in remote areas are missing musical opportunities, and the ACFM has started a program in Cape York. "It is a genuine partnership with Indigenous people, where they are responsible for what develops. We go up and help - we provide musical instruments and music tuition. We start the program then we work together - it's not something we run in and do and then we disappear - we do something where we are a direct partnership. And we want to do that in other regions of Australia."

For the ACO, time is the greatest obstacle. The orchestra launched its education scheme at Cabramatta High School in Sydney in March. A series of workshops were held, culminating in a performance before the whole school with selected students playing with the ACO. The orchestra is targeting disadvantaged schools and next year will take the program to Collingwood in Melbourne. "We'd love to take the program all over the country but although raising the funds for this has been quite easy, the difficulty is our hectic schedule," says Tognetti. "We need to perform so many concerts a year - the challenge is in keeping an arts company afloat."

He adds that the ACO is currently considering launching a second performing ensemble to travel to regional areas. That has the potential to take some of the burden off the players, allowing for more work in the area of education. "The key thing is to make it fun. That's why Don is so good - he makes it all really enjoyable for the kids."

One of Don Spencer's pet projects is the National Song-writing Competition, open to children of all ages from every school in the country, and which had over 3000 entries in 2004. Kids are encouraged to be creative in any way they can, and can submit their entries any way they like, from recordings on cassette tape, to disc, to handwritten manuscripts. Though only a few prizes - in the form of vouchers for musical equipment - can be awarded, he sends a great many letters of encouragement, trying to reach as many children as possible. He's concerned, though, about the subjects the children sing about. "It would be an interesting study," he says. "So many of them are very depressing. The state of the world..."

But there is always optimism when there are so many people and organisations prepared to work extra hours or even voluntarily to teach music to kids.

"I am asked by parents and teachers all the time if I can start similar projects in their area," he says, "and we'd love to. And we will, once we have the funding."

There's nothing so broken it can't be repaired, by a kiss, a smile, a tear. Or music.


STATE OF PLAYING

What is the quality of music in state schools? This is what various state officials told limelight:

South Australia: A spokesperson for the Department of Education and Children's Services said there were music teachers in about 40 per cent of state schools.

Tasmania: 93 per cent of primary schools, and all high schools, have specialist music teachers.

New South Wales: The Department of Education said not all schools had music specialists. In some high schools and primary schools, the music teachers were not specialists, but had musical knowledge. Victoria: The Department of Education and Training said there were music teachers in most secondary schools. For primary schools, the" notion of specialist music teachers was diminishing", and not all primary schools had specialists.

Western Australia: There is not a specialist music teacher in every school.

Queensland: The Education Department said that only remote primary schools didn't have specialist music teachers, and its primary school program was the most expensive in the country.

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Thanks, Jayem