The rhythm of life

Mike Simpson explores the health benefits of drumming

Music improves our wellbeing –we’ve all heard that before. But how? The term ‘wellbeing’ is so broad – what exactly does it mean? Are there specific musical activities we can be doing with children that target improving specific needs? If so, will it help the children academically, socially, and emotionally, and – most importantly – how can we prove it?!

For the past 23 years I have facilitated global arts workshops with all ages of children throughout the UK and across the world. My wife, Jacqui, and I founded Inspire-Works in 2002 and lead a team of 18 workshop facilitators from 12 different countries who have facilitated workshops to well over 1 million participants. It doesn’t matter if our facilitators are leading a Caribbean steel pan, Japanese taiko drumming, West African drumming, Brazilian samba drumming, Indian dohl drumming or Indonesian gamelan workshop, we frequently get the participants at the end of the workshop saying, “I feel great!”

This has always fascinated me – is this more than just a ‘feel-good’ experience for the participants who have enjoyed an exciting and inspiring ‘hands-on’ workshop? Or is there actually something deeper going on? Is there anything that is happening to our bodies when we participate in group-drumming that has made our bodies and minds be healthier? In the school or youth group context, could group drumming help young people improve their social and emotional mental health? Could groupdrumming therefore help improve their confidence, academic achievements, and foster a more positive outlook? If it can do all these things, most importantly - how can we prove it?

Armed with these burning questions and excitement of what group drumming could achieve to help the social and emotional mental health of young people, I set off on a journey of research lasting almost a decade. This journey took me to Austin Texas to be trained as a Remo HealthRHYTHMS facilitator, to a year of mentoring with one of the world’s leading music therapists in California, and to Rhythm2Recovery facilitator training developed by a therapist in Australia who specialises in evidencebased interventions utilising rhythm to assist with social and emotional learning and recovery from trauma. I also greatly valued the training I received as a Mental Health Youth First Aider to recognise various potential social and emotional issues, and the guidance on assessing artsbased therapies which I received as an Associate of the Royal Society for Public Health.

Drummers are often the butt of jokes about their brains, but as part of my research I soon discovered there is a wealth of neuroscience research into the positive effects of groupdrumming. Much of these scientific research projects use blood test samples (rather than just anecdotal evidence) to give concrete evidence and are done with people who are not drummers or have previously expressed a particular disposition for drumming. These neuroscience studies have shown that engagement in group-drumming activities can lead to various outcomes, including heightened natural killer cell activity (so their immune systems are boosted), decreased levels of stress and burnout, enhanced mood states, improved creativity, and social bonding, among other benefits.

At the height of the Covid Pandemic we released the #BodyPercussion #RecoveryCurriculum using funding from Arts Council England. This combined my knowledge with the recommendations set out in Professor Barry Carpenter’s great work of the Recovery Curriculum. As Professor of Mental Health in Education at Oxford Brookes University, Professor Carpenter and his son Matthew (who is Vice Principal of a school academy in the Midlands) stated in the Recovery Curriculum the potential issues children might face after being away from the classroom for many months. Knowing that UK government Covid restrictions stated that singing and the sharing of musical instruments were not allowed in the classroom, we thought body percussion seemed like the perfect fit to help children and teachers explore and discuss the issues raised that Professor Carpenter states. We were astounded when within 3 weeks of publication in August 2020, our #BodyPercussion #RecoveryCurriculum was used by over 200,000 children in 1,500 schools in 27 countries!

Since the pandemic, we have worked with our facilitators to develop a programme which we named the Drumbeatable Programme and have been delivering it to groups of children in primary and secondary schools throughout London and the South East.

The Drumbeatable Programme uses percussion instruments instead of the body, with more varied activities to help sustain the programme over a longer duration, and more clearly defined assessment and evaluation tools to prove the impact of the programme for each participant. Each activity in Drumbeatable Programme has been carefully chosen and is mapped to evidencebased studies which show how they are intended to help the social and emotional resilience of the participants. These rhythm-based activities are backed up by the Drumbeatable Programme Evaluation Framework which monitors both the needs and progression of each individual participating in the programme.

It has been so rewarding to see how the participating children have been impacted by the Drumbeatable Programme and how this has affected their concentration, academic progress and social and emotional health.

Scaling up

In early 2024 we reached the capacity for the number of Drumbeatable Programme sessions our facilitators could deliver in schools that academic year, so we thought – why not train other people to deliver it?!

We were aware of three factors that would differ from the way we’d been delivering the programme ‘in-house’ with Inspire-Works facilitators; 1) the range of available drums and percussion instruments in each school will greatly differ, 2) even highly experienced music teachers will have differing levels of confidence in delivering group drumming programmes, 3) teachers will have differing levels of knowledge and experience of delivering arts-based therapies to improve social and emotional health. So, we developed different levels of training to best suit anyone who is interested in using the programme in their setting, offering different levels of support, both inperson and online. We also ensured all activities in the Drumbeatable Programme can be delivered using any type of drum commonly found lurking at the bottom of a typical school music trolley!

Child C at the beginning of the programme appeared to be quite anxious at trying new things and would prefer to watch others before deciding to join in with the drumming activities. However, by Week 4, Child C became one of the most responsive members of the group and often wanted to take a lead in the activities and use the drum as a tool to express their feelings.

We have been delighted to train nearly 150 teachers in 2024 in addition to presenting the programme at several music hub conferences, nationally at the Music Teachers’ Association annual conference, and to be featured on the MTA Podcast when presenter Patrick Johns stated: “I urge all music educators to listen to Mike Simpson talking about how group-drumming helps children’s mental health, all backed up with medical research. This should surely be part of all schools’ game plans to help young people."

Over the weeks, the drumming activities helped Child A open up about their true feelings and at the end of one activity (which used shakers as analogy for feelings) they shared they were feeling sad for some time as their grandmother was unwell. This was a big step forwards for them to feel comfortable sharing their feelings within the group.

Mike Simpson is the co-founder of Inspire-Works, author of Hal Leonard’s Teach and Play series, and an examiner for Trinity College London.