Gig Based Learning offers innovative music education consulting services, combining online community learning with physical classroom upgrades. We partner with schools to enhance music programs through state-of-the-art equipment and evidence-based teaching methods.
“It’s All About The Gig”
This phrase was where Brad Fuller and Peter Orenstein landed some time in 2013 as they attempted to distil their experiences as musicians and educators.
They felt the phrase captured how an opportunity to share musical experiences and/or products (gigs) can be such a powerful motivator for musicians to study, create/source, and rehearse music.
Working from this maxim over the last ten years, they have developed an approach called Gig Based Learning (GBL).
GBL is a musically informed, philosophically driven learning design and facilitation process.
It gives teachers tools to provide students with opportunities for active, engaging, real-world music(k)ing with/for an authentic audience.
Building on the integrated learning experiences model - performance, composition, and listening, GBL puts these experiences to work to produce a great gig, contextualising the learning for the student so that it’s ‘just in time’ not ‘just in case’.
The approach aims to remove barriers between teacher and student, artist and technician, art music and popular music, traditional instruments and computer instruments, and more by focussing on using the best tools to tell the story.
The regular turnaround of gigs allows teachers and students to rapidly iterate, as they learn from successes and failures, leading to continually improving instructional design.
They’ve coined GBL to help teachers legitimise active music making in the classroom.
Our Vision
“Play Music“
Elliot and Silverman (2014) say:
“Music is something people do for—and with—each other for a very wide range of human ‘goods,’ benefits, and values”.
Through Gig Based Learning (GBL), we’re advocating passionately for a classroom music education that embodies “Play Music” in the full sense, where music education is “conceived and carried out ethically, for full human flourishing and transformation” (Elliot and Silverman, 2014).
Participants in GBL aren’t teachers and students, they are musicians working towards a gig.
Our catchphrase “It’s all about the gig”, helps us all to remember that we’re always working towards that next opportunity to share music with each other in the myriad of ways the 21st Century affords.
We’re determined to continue to push ourselves and our colleagues to participate in a classroom music education that privileges people, fun, caring and music(k)ing and helps us to live a “good life” - today, tomorrow, and beyond.
We’d love you to participate us in our quest by joining the Gig Based Learning Community of Practice.
Make a joyful noise!
Dr Brad Fuller & Peter Orenstein
The Founders