Don’t value your self-worth by others or external things but by appreciating who you are within. I host the Roundtable with Awards for Young Musicians, with funding from Youth Music. Your path doesn’t look like anybody else’s because it can’t, it shouldn’t, and it won’t.

I've written more about measurements here and also in this post on journeys, learning and being exceptional. You wouldn't use a ruler to measure creativity. I designed this poster, distilling the responses from this Roundtable meeting and other sources and discussions, to help people with thinking about which measures they use, and which they don't, and with what consequences. So inevitably, the measures we use have a huge impact on the support for progression we end up giving.Īll measures are good at measuring some things, but not others. What needs working on? What's wrong? What's right? What's exceptional? Is this heading in the right direction? Do I like it? Do they like it? How do I know it's any good etc. Measuring, monitoring and assessing are a crucial element of progression: we do them all the time - constantly measuring how we, or the people we're supporting, are doing.

If you're busy doing wrong activities, you are bound. But interestingly, virtually none of the 40 young musicians and music education professionals mentioned exams when we asked them to consider how they understood musical achievement, at a recent meeting of the Musical Progressions Roundtable. But then you don't want to keep yourself busy doing irrelevant activities or, worse, wrong activities. Perhaps the most recognised measures are things like graded music exams, GCSE results etc. The Berlin Study In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universitt der Knste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West Berlin.

If you ask people how they think they measure musical progression, you may well get quite a complicated answer.

You're doing it wrong achievement