What is a Learning Community, and How Can it Help You Stay Motivated?

It’s amazing how quickly the calendar becomes blank.  In February, I was facing down a whirlwind spring.  Now, a long, bare spring and summer stretch ahead, and I’m wondering if my September and October work will get cancelled, too.

This photo of hands totally makes me low-grade nervous now!

No concerts means nothing to practice for, so in addition to upending my daily life, COVID has blown apart my practicing routine. I literally have nothing for the foreseeable future for which I must practice.  I could do anything- but there’s nothing I must do. That’s a disconcerting feeling!

I know I’m not alone.  Concerts are canceled, recorder societies are on hiatus…we’ve all lost our regular playing outlets.  And without a specific event to practice for, it gets harder to maintain a quality practice routine —at least for me.

For about a week after the last of my spring concerts was cancelled, I drifted.  I played through one thing after another, hopping around, not bothering to invest much time or energy in anything.

After seven or eight days of that, I’d had enough. I needed structure and accountability, and if the world wasn’t going to provide them for me, I’d have to set them up for myself.

I decided to form a learning community.

What is a learning community?  Loosely, a learning community is a group of learners progressing together through a project. (Obviously, these days, your learning community will be online.) Membership in a learning community can benefit your practice by providing structure and social accountability- both powerful motivators. And it can help your fellow community members find the same. 

Interested in forming your own learning community? All you need is a project, some people, a platform, and some ground rules.  Let’s look at each of these things a little more in-depth.

Project

A project helps to focus your endeavor and make your conversation relevant, a little like a book club for music. It also provides your group with a built-in-structure. For my community’s project,  I proposed digging in to Telemann’s solo fantasias for viola da gamba, recently published in an arrangement for recorder by Girolamo. The original facsimile for viol is also available on imslp, which made for a nice opportunity to refer back to the source.

Other possible projects: Telemann’s solo fantasias for recorder, Van Eyck’s Der Fluyten Lust Hof, Bach’s cello suites….the possibilities are legion.  I think a multi-part collection is a good bet, since it looks like we’ll all be immured for a while. And working on solo music seems, at least to me, a little bit less sad.

People

I selected a project first, and then put out a call to other professional players to see if anyone was interested in joining me.  Five said yes, and I am grateful to them.  While the playing levels within your learning community can vary, I do think it’s helpful if you’re all more or less in the same range- it will make it easier to dig into the repertoire and support one another. I also like an open call rather than a specific ask- some people might not need or want a project like this during this time, and that’s OK.

Procedure and Platform

Before you start, lay out some kind of schedule or procedure.  In my community, the plan was originally to tackle one fantasia per week (there are 12), but we’ve since realized we should the window for each fantasia to two weeks.  Within the course of that fortnight (and beyond), everyone is encouraged (not required!) to engage publically in some way with the selected fantasia-.  The engagement could be posing a question or making a comment, submitting a video file or even offering a live performance.  I made a private Facebook group for my learning community, but you could also communicate via email, zoom call, or another method your group finds convenient.

Ground Rules

I think this can be pretty loose, but you might consider agreeing as a group to the following:

1)    What happens in the group stays in the group (no public sharing of private files)

2)    Don’t expect perfection- of yourself or others.  Learning communities work best when you are not afraid to share, improve, and learn.

I’m only a few weeks into my project, but it’s already giving me some of the structure I need, and I’m excited to see it through. And If you form or have formed a learning community, I’m interested in hearing about it- drop me a line at anne@annetimberlake.com