A few moments with Play for Progress’s Alyson Frazier

On 8th April we invite you to the Crypt on the Green to celebrate the launch of our third CD, Speak, Be Silent, our first release on Huddersfield Contemporary Records. You can pre-order the CD here.

Riot Ensemble artists will play solo works by each of the composers represented on the CD: Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Mirela Ivičevič, and Chaya Czernowin. Doors at 7:00pm, music from 7:30pm. Please stay afterwards for drinks (there will be a cash bar) and conversation.

The concert will be free (but please RSVP here). In lieu of tickets we will be collecting donations to support Play for Progress, a charity that delivers therapeutic and educational music programmes for traumatized and socially isolated unaccompanied minor refugees. Flautist Alyson Frazier, a Play for Progress co-founder, took time out from her demanding work to talk to us about what the charity does and why its work is so important.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson: Hi Alyson, and thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! To begin with, can you briefly outline what Play for Progress is all about?

Alyson Frazier: Play for Progress offers a programme of creative music and arts activities complemented by therapeutic, educational, and practical support. In partnership with the Refugee Council Children’s Section our work seeks to combat refugees’ isolation, develop their confidence, self-expression and sense of community, and deepen and extend the webs of support they have to rely upon so as to improve their social and emotional well-being.

We are tirelessly working to build a community of mutually trusting and resilient citizens of the world (kids, tutors and support staff, Allies in Art, donors, and volunteers alike) who learn from, celebrate, and support one another at every opportunity, especially through music, learning, creative play, and sharing.

Ours is a service delivery organization that incorporates well-being support and advocacy that is based on the strong trust and relationships that we build with individual young people during our weekly activities. Every week we run group instrumental jam sessions, 1-on-1 private lessons, recording/arranging/writing (RAW) classes, creative arts therapy, 1-on-1 therapy sessions, and voice expression classes. Several times a term we also host our #AlliesInArt series, external performances (catch us at the V&A on June 16th!), outings to cultural events in London, half-term projects, and holiday residentials.

TR-J: Why is a charity like this needed?

AF: All of these teens endured harrowing experiences as they journeyed to get here, and upon arriving discovered that this land of ‘safety’ is not yet open to them, and that the process of gaining asylum is itself lengthy, unpredictable, traumatic, and not even guaranteed. While their applications are evaluated many of these young people are placed in ill-equipped, over prescribed, and impermanent accommodation in and around Croydon/South London. Only some are given access to formal education and mental health provision.

We have discovered through our work with this exceedingly vulnerable community that the systems presently in place are insufficient to care for their varied and rightfully demanding needs. We want to be there for them, to help them connect with and build trusting relationships with peers and adults alike and offer ways for them to healthily and safely release tensions and process trauma so that they can begin to transition from surviving to thriving. We want to offer them a place of respite, safety, and care; a holding place while we work to inform care systems of gaps in their services, and help to develop solutions.

TR-J: Where does music fit in? What benefits can it offer to young people within the asylum system?

AF: In order to answer that question I have to lay out the context:

Children caught in war and violence are traumatized. Their education has been interrupted, was limited or non-existent, and their emotional and intellectual growth during crucial years of development have been impacted devastatingly by the traumas they have experienced. When they arrive they are wary, face extreme challenges with language, and feel extremely isolated and under threat.

Music has an exceptional ability to get to the core of a human. By engaging in group music making and movement you can bypass (and harness the benefits of) language barriers and social anxieties in a way that simply isn’t possible outside of the medium. You can rally a room into working together to express itself, create a united vision, give voice to individuals, and more, faster and more deeply than by using any other art form.

It’s also an exceedingly bonding experience, and in this world of difference, sharing and passing on our cultural traditions through oral traditions is a precious thing. It’s all about subtext: if someone offers to teach you their Kurdish dance, they are not just saying ‘want to dance?’; they are welcoming you into their cultural space, offering you a connection to their home (which will surely be filled with tension and deep, complex emotions), their self. Further, they have identified you as someone with whom they feel safe, and with whom they want to share this often hidden part of themselves. There is nothing more precious and deeply meaningful than the intimate sharing of the self through those elements that make you you.

Music provides an outlet for creative thinking, a means for emotional processing and release, and a method of encouraging positive challenges of the self (a rare experience for these vulnerable young people who tend encounter exclusively threatening challenges). Making music, developing your creative languages, and practising group art-making in its many forms unlocks the gates to self-appreciation, self-exploration, and self-expression, and enhances communal appreciation, expression, and development. PFP programmes are designed to encourage and enable these children to find enjoyment and respite from trauma in making music, exploring cultural traditions, collaborating with peers, and exploring their own creative and musical voices.

TR-J: What takes place in your classes? How do you see the musical and therapeutic sides interacting?

AF: Our students can choose to learn the flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, violin, cello, piano, drums, voice, and music production. They also engage with varied art forms through our creative arts therapy classes, which continue to work with rap, poetry, shadow puppetry, dance, beatboxing, and visual arts.

Everything we do incorporates musicianship games, improvisation, sharing, jamming, different methods of learning and reading music, and a lot of work by ear. Further, the practice of being an audience member is vitally important. These young people are very rarely (if ever) given the space to be heard, really listened to, by a group of sympathetic and caring humans. As such, a huge part of our classes is the ‘sharing’ portion, in which every young person has the opportunity to share what they’ve learned that day, whether that be performing a piece they’ve been working on for weeks, or showing they’ve learned how to hold a bow and allow an open string to ring. We all celebrate their achievement with whoops and hollers, and it has a magical effect on that young person – you can visibly see stress build and release, you can see a change in their confidence, and you can see them feeling something special and different about that experience. It deeply bonds the group and identifies the space as something beyond the norm.

It’s so important to have friends and allies appreciate and acknowledge your accomplishments, especially when your family can’t be there. For this reason we also put on end-of-term  showcases to celebrate out incredible students. July 24th is this year’s and all are welcome! Send an email to a.frazier@playforprogress.com with RSVP Showcase in the title and we will be glad to have you join us for the evening.

TR-J: Do you have any particular experiences you can share of sessions – any good stories?

AF: I think it’s best to let the kids speak for themselves. So here are some soundbites they’ve offered at various points of working with us.

Thank you so much. That is why I came to day. Today I do not forget the people who is love me. And I have to grow up my flower on top of stone some time. Anyway thank you so much for make me happy, you all such a wonderful doctors not musicians. I proud of you. To change people life from bad story from the past. The meaning of Play for Progress is start creative life with good consequences to live.

A violin student

I love everything [about PFP]. When I come to class I learning with the teacher so after that everyone do together. I love this because makes me happy. I’m very interested in everything.

A piano student about our weekly Friday sessions

Today was great!! And performance of music in front of people was excited and a moment I thought I’m Tom Cruise! And dreams something like that. So thank you for all that you’ve done for us. 

A clarinet student after performing at the V&A (June 2018)

Your class makes me feel safe and part of something good. I can forget my missing of my home, my mother. I can forget feeling alone and scared. I thank you, each of you, you make me happy, you make me forget, with you I feel safe, it is so good what you do for us, for me, I thank you. 

A violin and piano student (2017)

TR-J What sorts of music and artists do you engage with? Are there certain types of music that work better than others?

AF: We work with all sorts! From a Congolese fusion band, a Ghanaian afro jazz/funk band, and a 5-piece swing band complete with dancers, to a Flamenco pair, and a Caribbean carnival band. We encourage musicians and artists who want to engage with the community but don’t know how to participate in our #AlliesInArt series: our once-monthly set for external musicians to perform at the Refugee Council and engage with the young people as they would with any other audience. Whether it’s traditional Kurdish music that gets the kids up and dancing, or some smooth jazz that soothes them, it’s a great way to break the ice, groove, and get to know one another.

When it comes to our own performances, the kids bring tunes that they love (whether folk from home, or pop tunes from abroad), and we arrange it specifically for our ensemble make up. Sometimes kids will write their own works too, which we help them to devise. At a recent performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, we performed a work by a student who built a composition around a poem he’d written. It yielded some astoundingly beautiful moments of unity and trust when he encouraged younger participants to engage in the free-form improv section and add their voice to his own, which seamlessly transitioned into our raucous arrangement of a Hindi tune that it turned out a huge number of our kids knew already, despite being from incredibly disparate parts of the world (Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq). Go figure! But it tickled me completely that we all united with this Bollywood tune, presenting our own composite joy in music making and in each other.

TR-J: How open are the young people to what you are doing?

AF: Brilliantly, our kids are exceedingly vocal about what they want, and we find that once they feel comfortable in our sessions, the requests and recommendations flow, and we just have to keep up with them!

How and when we expand what activities deliver is dependent upon what the kids say they want. We noticed that many organisations have been set up, and this vulnerable group is expected to slot into it. But the reality is that that structure leaves many young people out on a limb and without sufficient support. Thanks to our smaller size and relative newness, we are able to adapt swiftly and directly to their needs and wants, and achieve high consistency of attendance.

TRJ: Finally, do you follow what happens to the young people after they leave the asylum system? How do you think music benefits them in their future lives?

AF: Our oldest participants are only just now turning 18 and facing the trials and traumas that come with the unacceptably young leaving care age of 18. We are learning with them the numerous and varied challenges and triggers that arise at this time, and we are swiftly working to develop and formalise the advocacy sides of our work so that we can 1) provide support to young people as they ‘age-out’ of the traditional care system 2) influence policy change (including changing the leaving care age) and improve the status quo through compiled documentation of the experiences of our community and guidance on best practices. This community is very much underserved and under researched, having been entered into the normal care system without additional provisions for their ‘asylum-seeker specific’ needs.

In terms of following what happens to our young people, once we develop a relationship with them, we will sustain it. Thus far, young people who have gone on to prepare to sit uni entrance exams will still attend external performances and cheer our younger kids on. They will come to sessions occasionally and bring friends who are new to the country so that they can also begin to build a community, and they grow into leadership positions within our organisation. Learning from and discussing with them about the roles they might want to take on, and how we could support that by developing roles within our organisation for them is something we are working on now.

Click to learn more about Play for Progress. If you can’t make it on 8th April you can donate to the charity directly.