After obtaining a BA (Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature from The Open University in 2019, David Russell joined Sussex Writes in 2020 while completing his MA in English: Literature, Culture and Theory. He is now in the second year of an English PhD, supervised by Dr Rachel Stenner, and Professor Andrew Hadfield. His research topic concerns the rhetoric of early modern disease. Russell was motivated to join Sussex Writes for two simple reasons: firstly, because he shares the team’s enthusiasm for all things creative, and secondly, because he wanted to help kindle this same enthusiasm in others. Having previously occupied the roles of media content provider, and workshop coordinator, he has recently been appointed assistant director of Sussex Writes. Russell has a keen interest in poetry/dramatic verse, and especially rhythm and meter, fuelled by my 30 years drumming experience.

In early 2023, Dr Emma Newport’s creative writing outreach initiative, Sussex Writes, planned a day-long widening participation event for Year 11s. On Tuesday 18^th July, the Sussex Writes workshop-team then welcomed 90 pupils from Hove’s Blatchington Mill High School on to campus to participate in a day of activities. There were six in total, run at various locations around the university. Pupils were led round in groups of 15, with each group participating in each activity for approximately 20 minutes. The day had three key aims: firstly, to give pupils a taste of campus life; secondly, to collaborate with them on a range of innovative, student-led, creative exercises; thirdly, if possible, to inspire them to pursue, beyond the event itself, something they learnt about, or sampled, during one of the exercises, providing that any intention on their part to do so be guided by their personal aspirations, and desire for self-enrichment.

In this respect, I draw on the work of Jon Rainford who writes that the responsiveness to individuals’ aspirations that is at the heart of WP policy has “morphed into into policy that sought to align individual aspirations with what higher education institutions have to offer. Where individual aspirations were not for HE, they were instead positioned in deficit and in need of “raising” (Rainford). Like Rainford, I hold that ‘Aspirations are not universal but are personal, shaped by individual concerns about what matters in life’ (Rainford, 2021, p. 414). That we aspire to those things that hold value for each one of us, relative to our own unique cultural and socio-economic circumstances, is a view that drives my own pedagogical approach.

With the aforementioned aims in mind, I thus designed and delivered an interdisciplinary activity which took place at the Jubilee lecture theatre. This activity explored synaesethesia. Having briefly discussed with the pupils the etymology of the term, and looked at some literary examples, I challenged them, not to write about it, but to practice it, percussively. Here, I drew on Ghanian musical tradition. As Joseph Nketia explains,

The use of drums as “vehicles of language” is a widespread art in Africa. Drums, however, are not meant to compete with human speech in ordinary everyday life, but rather to supplement it in certain situations: to replace it in situations in which the human voice would be too feeble, or situation in which certain things are better drummed than spoken. (Nketia, 1955-57, as cited in Smith, 2018, p. 53)

Based on the suggestion that their experience of the University of Sussex was ‘better drummed than spoken’, I worked with each group of pupils to interpret, through drumming, the look and feel of the campus. Together, we proceeded to explore these campus rhythms via an array of percussive equipment including bongos, drum kit, snare drum, digital drum pad, cajon, egg shaker, and tambourine.

My goal was to engage with each group of pupils by way of fun, dynamic, active learning that would encourage them to think about how people other than themselves might experience the world. My intention, in so doing, was to promote greater understanding, empathy, and above all tolerance, of differences in perception and comprehension of their shared environment through what Margarita Steinberg (2019) calls ‘tangible embodied expressions of theoretical concepts’, a method conducive to ‘teamwork, problem solving, and enhancing interpersonal skills’. Employing both conversation and percussive experimentation, each one of us thus articulated in our own unique way, whether through beats or clicks, palm-strikes or stick-hits, the biological rhythms, societal rhythms, rhythms of nature, and of technology, at work on campus. This process sparked lively debate about a variety of topics ranging from education to architecture, from migration to mental health.

For me, there were three main takeaways from running this event. The first was the pupils’ genuine relish for this mode of self-expression; and when I say relish, I mean literally running to get their hands on the equipment, and get involved! This kind of willingness to participate, or at least have a go is, in my experience, often lacking when children are asked to attempt something unfamiliar. The second was that participants were extremely attentive from beginning to end. For example, there was lots of questions being asked throughout the day, which for me is always a good sign that pupils are really engaged. But above all, what I couldn’t help but notice was just how happy, joyous even, these pupils were, evidently revelling in the physicality and spontaneity of the exercise. Indeed, the highlight of the day came when one boy was given free rein on the drum kit; he wasn’t just smiling, he was beaming, and come the end of the session, reluctant to relinquish the drum sticks.

I believe any activity that can get young people this enthused about study, about being creative, about collaborating, is worth repeating. And it is my conviction that this exercise has other, as yet unexplored, applications, one of which would simply entail expanding its scope. In other words, more composition time, more time to critique their compositions, more percussive equipment, all culminating in a performance for parents, teachers, and peers.

I have also had some success using drumming to teach rhythm and meter in prosody, translating the unstressed and stressed syllables into kick drum and snare drum beats, respectively. The advantage of this approach was to provide listeners with a distinctly audible contrast between the two kinds of syllabic stresses. Hence, I was able to demonstrate the four primary rhythms – iambic, trochaic, anapaestic, and dactylic. Asking students to clap hands, and stomp feet so as to recreate these rhythms also served to create a memorable teaching experience that helped them to consolidate their newly acquired knowledge, and therefore better retain what they had learnt.

References

Nketia, J. (2018).‘The Poetry of Drums’. The poetry of drums. In Victoria Ellen Smith (Ed.),Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System, 1955-57 (pp. 53–59). Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.

Rainford, J. (2021). Are we still “raising aspirations”? the complex relationship between aspiration and widening participation practices in English higher education institutions. Educational Review, 75(3), 411–428. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1923461

Steinberg, M. (2019). A Tango for learning: An innovative Experiential Learning format using Embodied Learning’. In Wendy Garnham, Tab Betts, and Paolo Oprandi (Eds.), Disrupting traditional pedagogy: Active Learning in practice. University of Sussex Open Press. <https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10