What do Musical Futures and the Atkins Diet have in common? How ideas spread.
And if you're involved in education in the UK, you're probably also aware of Musical Futures, an approach to music education that's now in over half of Britain's music classrooms.
They're two ideas that very quickly spread far and wide. This wasn't down to savvy social media marketing, and it wasn't down to intensive advertising. The reason that these two ideas spread so effectively is because they're what Seth Godin would call 'virus worthy'. Seth argues that ideas can be engineered to spread quickly through word of mouth - and that's exactly what happened with these two approaches.
They both had a 'sticky' initial phase that gained attention.
Musical Futures starts with a phase called 'In at the Deep End', where students form groups, are given space, and are asked to prepare a cover version of any song they choose. Ask somebody about Musical Futures, and this is the part they'll probably remember.
Atkins starts with a severely restrictive phase, during which fatty foods are encouraged. Ask somebody about Atkins, and this is the part they'll probably remember.
Now, both ideas have far more to them than just this initial phase. Musical Futures is a diverse collection of approaches and ideas, and there are a number of phases that follow 'In at the Deep End' - and the Atkins diet is only so restrictive for a small amount of time. But in both cases, it's still this initial phase that caused their ideas to spread. Why these phases, and not any of the others?
These initial phases both went against conventional wisdom.
Classroom music, by conventional wisdom, should be highly structured and teacher-led.
Weight loss, by conventional wisdom, should be done through a low fat diet.
The initial phases of these two approaches turn conventional wisdom on its head, and that's why they're so sticky. They're a talking point in themselves - they encourage people to discuss the approach, and to have an opinion. People will disagree, and people will be polarised - but that's where their power lies.
Crucially, these initial phases weren't artificially added as shock tactics to aid publicity - in both cases they're true to, and are a distillation of the entire approach.
But having heard of an idea isn't they key - it's the 'conversion' of those who've heard the idea to those who actively apply it that matters. How did these ideas 'convert' so well?
The core ideas were freely available and easily understood
Musical Futures is a non-profit organisation, and Atkins is a commercial one - but they both followed the same path. Want to try Musical Futures in the classroom? Go and download the PDF book and watch the videos. Want to try Atkins? The entire plan is on their website, for free. Both offer their main idea as easily digestable chunks that can be quickly understood.
What can we learn from this?
I'm really interested in the way that ideas spread in education. Musical Futures stands up as a great example of how a great idea, that has the power to enrich the creative lives of millions of students, can spread so quickly and so cheaply (the whole project was undertaken with surprisingly little funding and staff hours).
I'm especially interested in what we can learn from educational ideas that have spread effectively under their own steam, and how this can be applied to other worthy ideas - especially at a time of immense change and pressure in schools. As well as looking at successful educational ideas, we also need to look at great examples from outside the education world.
There was another set of materials that were released around the same time that Musical Futures started to gain traction - the snappily titled Secondary National Strategy for Music. Although it was produced by a Government body and had lots of authority, funding and man-hours behind it, the lasting impact it had in classrooms was dwarfed by Musical Futures. I'm going to blog soon with a comparison of these two approaches.
