Impacts of the Songmakers Program

SongMakers has:

‘Shown me how accessible it is: it seemed sort of far-fetched to be creating full pieces and songs in two days, but you realise all you have to do is sit down and start writing and producing.’

SongMakers Participant (SongMakers 2023 Program Evaluation, Patternmakers)

SongMakers is:

‘internationally significant in the fields of arts education and vocational education, with few comparable programs demonstrating the kinds of consistent and sustained positive outcomes for students’ learning in and beyond music.’

(Multi-year program evaluation, University of Tasmania)

SONGMAKERS 2023 PATTERNMAKERS PROGRAM EVALUATION - PARTICIPANTS

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of participants agree the program taught them to collaborate on a song, while 86% agree the program helped them build their skills in writing a song from scratch.

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say they’re proud of the song they made in the workshops – a major accomplishment, considering many participants were co-writing for the first time.

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say songwriting improves their mood – consistent with evidence that shows arts participation can be a vital tool for protecting the wellbeing of young people.

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of those responding to a follow-up survey say that since the workshop, they have written an original song. Most have also performed an original song (63%) and/or recorded an original song (50%).

SongMakers 2020 University of Tasmania Evaluation - Teacher Feedback

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teachers stated that students have written more of their own songs since participating in the SongMakers workshop.

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teachers strongly agreed that the workshop provided students with learning opportunities that are not otherwise available to them.

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teachers strongly agreed that the mentors were effective in sharing knowledge about the music industry and in motivating students to create their own music.

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teachers strongly agreed that they had observed positive differences in students’ attitudes towards their learning since the SongMakers workshop.

in 9 years we have

Matched

world class mentors

With

schools

Created

songs

Helped

teachers

Worked with

students

Meet Our Alums

SongMakers alumni are everywhere. Our honour roll includes Taka Perry, Tia Gostelow and Chloe Dadd and many more.

Why SongMakers?

Songwriting can be a site of resilience in schools, helping students cope with the challenges of adolescence.
Group songwriting can help build empathy.
When industry and schools come together around arts programs, the benefits ripple out to the whole community.
International and Australian research finds that arts education generally and music education specifically are uniquely beneficial to students’ learning at school. The academic and policy community, and major global employers such as Google and Tesla, say students must develop the 21st century skills of creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration over more narrow, technical skills. These are the bedrock principles of SongMakers.
While music is one of the most dramatically-changing industries and presents exciting opportunities for young creatives, the pace of change makes it near impossible for teachers to keep up with developments. The SongMakers program bridges that gap to help teachers deliver relevant popular music education that matches the industry’s opportunities with their students’ aspirations.
In the longer term this kind of focused investment in the ecosystem around music creating will see cultural and economic rewards for Australia. How? Because Australia will be established internationally as a centre of excellence; as more Australians become engaged in creating music, there will be more excellence and commercial success for our writers. This will move Australia closer to being a net exporter of music like Sweden, the UK and the US.

Team writing

“Through the co-creation of popular music, students are offered a number of inroads into a positive learning experience – about music, the music industry, themselves as learners and artists, and themselves and others as collaborators. This supports a vibrant ecology not only for the contemporary music industry in Australia, but of quality education more broadly.”

SongMakers: an industry-led approach to arts partnerships in education Arts Education Policy Review, 2016

DID YOU KNOW?

Most hit songs are written by teams! It takes at least 4 songwriters to make a hit.

SongMakers is an important part of Australia’s industry development ecosystem because it encourages a stronger culture of creating original songs, collaboratively. Being able to collaborate is vital. For example, only 5 of 2018’s ARIA top 50 Australian Artist singles were written by sole writers (Amy Shark, Vance Joy (3) and Tash Sultana) – all the others were collaborations. And a Music Week  magazine study into the 2015 top 100 Billboard chart found it takes an average of 4.53 songwriters to create a global hit single.

SongMakers is partly inspired by Sweden, whose music export success is attributed to music-writing and production being a mainstreamed activity for school students over many decades. Despite its small population, Sweden is one of the three top exporters of music, along with the UK and the US. Australia is 8^th.

In 2019 Australia earned $52 million in international royalty income, more than double the 2013 figures, driven by the overseas success of our star writers such as Sia, Tones & I, Vance Joy and Sarah Aarons.

Transferrable skills

“Our commitment to inspire and support all learners to be connected, resilient, creative and curious is exemplified in our partnership with the SongMakers program. Maybe we will produce the next famous Tasmanian export but more importantly we will develop the transferable skills and attitudes our learners need for a fast-moving future: confidence, flexibility, adaptability and open-mindedness.”
Jane Polley, Curriculum Leader, The Arts, Department of Education, Tasmania

SongMakers delivers “Outstanding levels of student engagement, enjoyment, motivation relative to conventional school-based learning experiences".
(UTAS evaluation report 2014 – 2017)

When young people participate in SongMakers, they flex their creative thinking muscles, building all-important 21st century skills. We see improvements in their:

Motivation to complete tasks and sustained improvement in overall attitudes to learning
Confidence and clarity around goal-setting
Improved disposition to group work: creative thinking, collaboration, problem solving
Confidence and self-esteem in being able to meet a challenge, to a deadline, and push boundaries
Willingness to collaborate with others and value their input
Generate greater peer respect, for improved social connections

‘Transferrable’ outcomes (2014-2017 Evaluation report)