How U2 helped to transform the teaching of music in Ireland

In 2009 the economy was experiencing the full shock of the financial crash. The banks were broken, unemployment soared, tax revenues crashed along with household incomes and fear gripped the country.
It was the wrong time to be looking for public money to expand a pilot project nationwide that sought to give a musical education to every child in the State who wanted one.
Enter U2 and The Ireland Funds, a global philanthropic group. With State funding a nonstarter, they stepped in with a pledge of €7 million over five years. In February 2011 Music Generation was born.
Thirteen years later Music Generation is now in every local authority in the country with the exception of Cork County Council (which is coming on board). Last year some 115,936 children received tuition, one in 12 children of those under the age of 18 and probably one in 10 children of school-going age.
“We have scaled nationally,” says Music Generation director Rosaleen Molloy proudly. The head office is upstairs in the National Concert Hall. It’s a small staff, nine people in total, and there are more than 500 teachers across the country.
U2 and the Ireland Funds have given €13 million in philanthropic funding since it started, but Music Generation is now self-sustaining with €14 million coming equally from the Department of Education and local authorities annually. It is not a lot of money for such an ambitious programme.
The goal, she says, is not to produce the next U2, Van Morrison or Sinéad O’Connor, though that might happen. Rapper and singer Denise Chaila and Rusangano Family, the rap trio, were early beneficiaries.
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“It’s about the power of music to help your emotional, social, psychological and creative development,” she says. “Every human being has the ability to create music.
“I’m enormously proud when I visit the length and breadth of the country to see the joy on young people’s faces having had the opportunity to work with the most amazing musician educators.”
At O’Connell Boy’s primary school in Dublin’s north inner city, senior infant students under the guidance of music teacher Ailbhe Kehoe use percussion instruments like shakers to instil a sense of rhythm. They throw scarves into the air to understand the concept in music of high and low. It is part of the Music Explorers programme for Music Generation’s youngest pupils.
The City of Dublin Education Training Board (CDETB) music development officer Kieran McGuinness believes prioritising Deis schools such as O’Connell’s, at primary and secondary level, is important to democratise access to music. Not everybody wants to learn music, but many of those who do have been stymied in the past from learning how to play.
“We are not trying to find musicians, we are trying not to miss someone,” says McGuinness. “You hope that people will create music. I got a voice note from one of my tutors. One of the teachers came in and said: ‘You’ve got to hear this.’
“This guy has never played the piano before. By the end of the first day he was playing chords, working out songs and suddenly he was there every week. He was crazy about it. He had always wanted to do it, but he couldn’t afford it.”
Music Generation at local level is run by Local Music Education Partnerships led by education and training boards and local authorities. Critically, it is a devolved process, so the success or failure of Music Generation in each area is up to those involved at local level.
The programme is in 29 primary schools and four secondary schools in Laois. There’s even a waiting list for the programme.
The remit of Music Generation Laois extends to men’s sheds, direct provision centres and Traveller halting sites. A Ukrainian women’s choir meets once a week under its auspices. Their plaintive version of The Fureys’ Steal Away speaks to a whole generation of Ukrainians who have lost their homeland.
The Shared Island Songwriting Project – a series of residential “hot houses” with children and young people from Laois, Offaly and across Northern Ireland – is being led by Music Generation Laois. The project will culminate in the creation of 12 original compositions, which will be showcased at festivals and arts centres.
Some 4,500 people in the county – or one in 20 of the population – are involved in a Music Generation programme one way or the other, says Music Generation Laois director Rosa Flannery.
“I feel now, after 12 years, there is a whole community behind us,” she says.
One of those who have benefited is 16-year-old Tony McInerney, a teenage Traveller who got involved with Music Generation through a youth club in Portlaoise. He and his cousin Martin Donoghue are taking vocal and piano lessons. They perform as the Bass Brothers and released a video last year of their self-penned song What I Will Always Be, which is about Traveller culture. It has been posted on YouTube.
Music Generation is not just for marginalised communities.
Siobhán Buckley, the harp tutor for Music Generation Laois, has 156 students in the county. Some will go on to become professional or semi-professional musicians. Others will play for the fun of it.
“Music Generation is there to transform the lives of children and young people through music, and I can absolutely attest that is the case,” says Flannery.
“We have seen so many people who have said: ‘My life changed when I signed up.’ They want to play music or study it at third level. They are authentic because I know the people involved.”
The improved economic fortunes of the State mean U2′s money is not needed as it was, but the band are still involved as “thought leaders”, says Molloy, contributing ideas about how Music Generation can reach as many people as possible.
The band declined to be interviewed for this article, but did post a video link, which was broadcast at the Music Generation annual conference earlier this year.
“That’s why we are all here. We all believe in the transformative power of music education,” bass player Adam Clayton said from Las Vegas, where the band are completing a residency at The Sphere.
“We know there is a lot more to be done to achieve equality of access but, as we look ahead to Music Generation’s future, we are filled with excitement and ambition for what is to come.”
Music Generation’s ambition to reach every child who wants a musical education has gone a long way to being fulfilled.
“You are actually demystifying the myth that is there that perhaps you have to be good at music or you have to be talented to learn,” says Molloy.
“Every human being has the ability to make and create music. It is our job as the musician educators in this field to open up the doors and tap into that innate musical ability that everybody has.”